Wed, 22 March, 2023
Haitao Zheng joined TWI as a Senior Project Leader in the NDE group based at TWI Cambridge in June 2018. His duties include leading projects, investigating new inspection techniques, and advancing existing inspection technologies for our Industrial Members.
He helps our Members address their inspection issues, including reducing costs, improving productivity and lowering the environmental impact of tasks, while also advising on the integration of automated solutions involving A.I. and robotics.
During his time at TWI, Haitao has worked on a range of different projects including developing a dark lock-in thermography inspection system and automated defect recognition methods for solar panel inspection (OLEDSOLAR), and creating shearography systems for wind turbine inspection (SHEARIOS and Winspect). Haitao is currently supporting the ‘Weldvue’ project to advance the thermographic inspection of welds in a production environment.
Haitao has also turned his expertise to writing a paper, ‘Defect Recognition of Roll-to-Roll Printed Conductors Using Dark Lock-in Thermography and Localized Segmentation’, which is published online and details a system for investigating defects to improve the cost-efficiency of industrial production of optoelectronic devices.
The Dark Lock-in Thermography (DLIT) system developed at TWI
Before joining TWI, Haitao studied for a major in Engineering Mechanics at the Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tongji University, Shanghai, China and gained his PhD in Civil Engineering from the School of Science for Open and Environmental Systems, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, where his dissertation investigated, ‘Distance Measures of Autoregressive Models for Structural Damage Detection.’
From here, Haitao began his career as a Civil Engineer for the Shanghai Construction Group before moving to a position as an R&D Engineer at Tokyo Sokushin Co. Ltd. This was followed by nearly two years working as a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and time spent as a Senior Engineer for Ryobi Geotechnique Pte Ltd, also in Singapore. In 2013, Haitao moved to the UK where he joined the Brunel Innovation Centre as a Research Fellow, leading several European and UK-based research projects related to non-destructive testing and structural health monitoring.
His research work has involved technologies including vibration testing and dynamic analysis, ultrasonic testing, acoustic emission testing, shearography, thermography and more, working in areas such as welding inspection, infrastructure, transport and aerospace engineering, petroleum engineering and renewable energies.
With a track-record of delivering hardware and software development for NDT and SHM applications through methods including vibration, thermography, shearography, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and more, Haitao is just one of the many experts who are ready to assist with projects for our Industrial Members.
Speaking on what his role offers him, Haitao said, “Working at TWI gives me the freedom to investigate new cutting-edge inspection technologies and to help our Industrial Members adopt such technologies to advance their business.”
Email the ‘Contact Us’ address, below, to get in touch with Haitao for help with your NDE needs.