Recently, the Numerical Modeling of Soil Constitutive Relationship, an academic work co-authored by Professor Qingyang Ren and Professor Jianting Zhou, was published as both paper and electronic publication by Springer, an internationally famous publishing house of academic journals and books.

Ranked among the world's largest academic publishers, Springer has been known for its rigorous academic approach and strict publishing standards since its establishment some 180 years ago. Springer focuses on the fields of chemistry, engineering, and computer sciences, as well as humanities and social sciences, wining much critical acclaim from experts and scholars around the world. The publication of the Numerical Modeling of Soil Constitutive Relationship co-authored by Qingyang Ren and Jianting Zhou represents Springer’s recognition of the excellent academic study made by the two authors.

Sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the book was compiled over a period of six years beginning in 2015. In the book, a total of 230 triaxial compression tests of expansive soil, sand, and clay under different confining pressures, drainage and solidification conditions and different stress paths are introduced with 3,910 pieces of valid test data obtained therefrom. The principle of the interaction between plastic strain and shearing strain is revealed and based on the inverse problem theory, a numerical constitutive model of three types of soils is built to give straight facts of the stress-strain relation yield surface and yield locus of soil in the stress field. The results prove that the numerical method to model soil constitutive relationship is superior to the traditional idea of looking for plastic potential, which performs better in describing the dilatancy and pressure sensitivity of soil, and is also able to give an index to the effects of different initial states and stress paths. It is a feasible, effective and promising new method for modeling constitutive relation of rock and soil.  

In the context of building China into a country with a strong transportation network and China Western Development, it is imperative to advance the development and reforms of China's civil engineering to a new level, which calls for more efforts in the increasing importance of basic researches and engineering applications. The publication of research achievements made by the professors committed to basic sciences by a world top publisher can be a powerful evidence of the academic competence and impact of the School of Civil Engineering of our university.