First look at Ling Xianchang photos, it is difficult to associate him with the professor: he is not tall, wearing a brown suit, a pair of flat black-framed glasses, his eyes are always squinting, and two corners of his head are cut out - some say he looks like a chef, while others say he looks like a local boss.
The one around him is recognized by Ling Xianchang: he was still in front of him the day before, and he arrived at the other end of China the next day. He has a small suitcase that is always spread out at home and packs a few daily clothes, so that he can pick up the box and rush to the airport after receiving the project call. He was away from home for half of his time and ran from one construction site to another.
It is the first in the world to open up a new discipline of rail transit dynamics in cold areas, with the purpose of studying the vibration response and stability of railway subgrade in cold areas. The high-performance mineral-based gelling material and application technology he invented solved the international problem of prevention and control of foundation frost damage in the northernmost high-speed rail station in my country - Yichun West Station , and created the most difficult high-speed rail construction in my country and even the world.
People who are familiar with Ling Xianchang think he is too low-key. An old friend said that almost no media interviewed him in recent years, and he almost never accepted media interviews. "The media likes people with stories, and does not like people like him. He is just knowledge after all."
Ling Xianchang has achieved many achievements. "Shandong Taishan Scholars Specially Asked by Shandong Province, foreign academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, published 10 works, published 293 papers, won 60 national invention patents, 12 utility model patents, 25 software copyrights, and 4 international patents, and took the lead in winning 1 second prize of the National Technical Invention Award, 1 second prize of the , and 4 first prizes of the provincial and ministerial science and technology progress award." But in the interview, he rarely mentioned these, saying that he was an engineer who solved civil engineering problems and a teacher.
On September 13, Ling Xianchang sorted out academic materials at home. Photo by Zhou Siya, Beijing News reporter
Northmost high-speed rail station
, chief engineer of Yichun West Station, Wang Wenjian, remembered that in August this year, the day when Ling Xianchang arrived at the construction site of Yichun West Station for the first time, he was leaning on a cane and wearing a pair of large slippers that didn't fit his feet. His feet were swollen, and he could clearly see the scars after the operation. After Wang Wenjian asked, he found out that Ling Xianchang had just had a gout stone surgery and had not finished his postoperative recovery, so he came to the scene. That day, Ling Xianchang drove hundreds of kilometers to investigate the geological conditions of the engineering along the Tieli -Yichun High-speed Railway.
At this time, the construction project of Yichun West Station has undergone three or four months of research. This is the terminal station of the Shangtiyi section of the northernmost high-speed railway under construction in my country, the Habitat-Iran High-speed Railway. It is located in the central part of Heilongjiang Province. It is also the first high-speed railway station building under construction with the highest latitude under construction in my country, the largest annual temperature difference in the region, and the first high-speed railway station building in the permafrost area of the high-altitude island. After the full line of , the Harbin-Yichun high-speed railway will be completed, the operating time of the Harbin-Yichun passenger train will be shortened from the current 7 hours to within 2 hours.
However, the most difficult construction problem is in front of you: in the northeast, in the spring season, the permafrost melts, the foundations of many buildings begin to sink, and the outdoor floor height is often twenty or thirty centimeters higher than indoors. Walking into the room is like walking into a big pit, the floor is loose and the steps are often cracked. Since the soil of different moisture content has not been treated, after the ice in the soil melts, the foundation has uneven settlement, and the appearance looks like layers of uneven waves.
, and Yichun West Station is located in the hinterland of in , and is one of the two largest black soil zones in the world. black soil has high porosity and strong compression, which brings great difficulty to construction. Moreover, the temperature difference in winter and summer is 80 degrees Celsius, and there is a 2.9-meter-long permafrost underground, with abundant groundwater and extremely high water content. This means that groundwater will undergo repeated freeze-thawing, causing the surrounding soil to undergo continuous expansion and contraction. After winter, the foundation can rise up to 20 cm. Therefore, if the soil is not treated, the stability of the roadbed will be affected, which will eventually lead to ground cracks and step breakages, which may also cause the building to collapse in serious cases.
Previously, although railways have been built in cold areas internationally for more than 100 years, the problem of roadbed or foundation frost damage has not been effectively solved for a long time. Wang Wenjian said that the conventional practice in the past was to control the moisture content of soil or use graded sand and gravel and other coarse gravel materials. However, these current practices often treat symptoms but not root causes: they can prevent surface water seepage in a short time and control frost damage, but they cannot prevent groundwater from migrating upward through soil capillaries. The foundation or roadbed will still be damaged in two or three years.
Wang Wenjian remembered that after many online meetings, Ling Xianchang visited the local area again and proposed a solution: use the anti-frost damage material developed by the team - high-performance mineral-based gelling materials. Ling Xianchang brought this gelling material to the site, mixed it into the soil, mixed it evenly, compacted it into molding. After only about an hour, the originally soft soil became hard. After
, Ling Xianchang and his team members retrieved representative soil samples from the site and conducted experiments in the laboratory for several months. The formulation of the gelling material was improved for the soil samples. The experimental results showed that the gelling material could cure and strengthen the soft soil underground in Yichun West Station, blocking the pores of the soil, and successfully preventing surface water infiltration and groundwater capillaries. "In this way, the soil moisture content of high-speed rail station foundation can be controlled in a very low stable range for a long time, and can successfully achieve freezing damage prevention and control in foundation or roadbed in high-altitude areas."
Wang Wenjian said that this material can not only effectively solve the problem of freezing damage prevention and control of foundations in long-term, but also reduce project construction costs and maintenance costs.
htmlOn August 24, at the construction site of the station building in Wucui District, Yichun City, Yichun City, the Yichun City, the northernmost high-speed rail station in the Haiyi High-speed Railway, as the first pile foundation was successfully drilled, the construction of Yichun West Station, my country's northernmost high-speed rail station, once again refreshed the latitude of my country's high-speed rail construction.Turn
In fact, as early as more than 20 years ago, Ling Xianchang, who had just graduated from a postdoctoral degree, began to study soft soil reinforcement - in his words, it is to turn soil into "stone". Historically, foundation settlement has occurred in buildings all over the world. In foreign countries, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy is the most famous foundation settlement building.
In the past, people often used soil curing agents to strengthen the soil performance, or reinforce the soil through cement grouting, but over time, coupled with the complex geological conditions in different regions, the effects are limited, and the potential harm is still continuous. Ling Xian thought long ago that if the soil could be turned into a stone as hard and dense, so that the soil would have the freezing resistance and anti-seepage properties of a complete structure stone, and then injected into the foundation, wouldn’t it not settle?
In 1998, Ling Xianchang, who was still a lecturer, brought different soils including Nanning, Guangxi, Panjin, Liaoning, Dongying, Shandong, Xinyang, Henan, etc., such as wet loess, clay, expansive soil, mudflat soil, etc. back to the laboratory through the green train . To cure these soils, chemical analysis and calculation must be performed repeatedly. Ling Xianchang first analyzed the chemical, minerals, particles and other components of soil through the instrument, then continued to conduct chemical reaction analysis and adjusted the proportioning plan of the gelling material, and then repeatedly performed chemical analysis calculations and proportioning experiments.
The experiment process is difficult and long, but the process is not smooth: chemical reaction equation is derived from the same, but the results are not ideal when doing the experiment.
Because the transportation, testing, activation and other processes of mineral materials require a lot of expenses, Ling Xianchang used up his limited scientific research funds and once reached the end of his life.
Fortunately, I persevered. Ling Xianchang remembers that after two years of experiment, the soil reinforcement was successfully achieved for the first time. The teacher in the same school was surprised by the experimental results and replaced the test with seven or eight presses to finally prove the success of the experiment: the soil with the addition of new materials reached a strength of more than 8 megapas, which was about the strength of a red brick.
Now, the high-performance mineral-based gelling material technology developed by Ling Xianchang has formed different raw material ratio solutions through continuous improvement, which can be suitable for anti-seepage reinforcement and freezing damage prevention and control of more than 20 soils. This technology has also obtained 14 national invention patents.
is related to geology and civil engineering. Since he was a child, Ling Xianchang's hometown was in a rural area in Hefei, Anhui Province. He always saw people from geological team running around with geological bags on his back. He felt that the job of geology was good, "you can still travel around with your salary."
Later, he applied for the mineral census major of Changchun Geology College, and studied from undergraduate to doctoral degree in geology . In 1998, at the age of 36, he decided to switch to the field of geotechnical engineering.
This is a very difficult attempt. Ling Xianchang said that both master's and doctoral majors are science, while geotechnical engineering is engineering. The two are very different in their thinking patterns and knowledge fields. Almost no one dared to cross the course between these two majors before. Ling Xianchang saw the huge potential in the field of civil engineering. He felt that the country was gradually entering a new era of rapid development at that time, and whether it was the construction of buildings, roads or bridges, it was inseparable from geotechnical engineering. If you have a good geological foundation, you will definitely achieve something in geotechnical engineering. After changing to major in
, Ling Xianchang started studying in the introductory subject of civil engineering. At that time, the school was working on the library. In order to accumulate practical experience, he went to the library every day, recognized the project chief engineer as the teacher, compared the building site and the nouns in the book, and asked, "Is this structural column ? Is that suppose the beam?" After that, he taught himself all the courses in mechanics including material mechanics , solid mechanics , elastic-plastic mechanics, etc., and also studied computer programming.
Ling Xian recalled that at that time, there was not much space at home. He carried piles of books to the balcony, laying plastic foam boards on the ground, and studying on the spot. "According to popular sayings now, I was 5+2 at that time, white and black." Due to the excessive pressure, he once gained 194 kilograms, and could only wear larger clothes and pants. But he persisted and finally completed the research project of postdoctoral civil engineering in just two years.
At the end of August, Ling Xianchang was at the construction site of Yichun West Station. Photo provided by the interviewee
"doctor" who treats difficult and complicated civil engineering problems
After the postdoctoral fellow left the station, Ling Xianchang entered Harbin Institute of Technology as a teacher. "It has reached the stage of putting what you have learned into practice."
He began to frequently go to various engineering projects. As soon as he received a call for help, he rushed to the scene with his suitcase. He spent half of the year on the construction site. "In engineering research, we must achieve the engineering site, and the engineering site is your research base. We must be able to solve engineering problems when we arrive at the site. The professor will know nothing when we arrive at the site, and the sign will be broken." He always told the students.
What Ling Xianchang feels most proud of in recent years is the anti-seepage reinforcement project of Jinlong Reservoir Dam in Longzhou, Guangxi.
Originally, the water resources of the reservoir could meet all the water needs of the surrounding two counties. However, due to the large amount of water leakage in the reservoir dam, the waterline of the reservoir has gradually sinking in the summer when the rainy water is abundant. If the water cannot be retained, the local rice will not grow taller, and both industrial and agricultural water will be affected, and the people will always lack domestic water.
After inspecting the soil quality and terrain on site, Ling Xian spent a month to extract soil on site and incorporate high-performance mineral-based gelling materials to prepare slurry, grouting and plugging leakage in the dam, successfully solving the problem of water leakage in the reservoir.
His high-performance mineral-based gelling materials are also used in the construction of a subway station on the North Second Ring Road in Beijing. He said that since the foundation of the subway station is backfill soil, it has the characteristics of high porosity and high compression, ground settlement began to occur shortly after the artificial excavation. Seeing that the settlement level had reached the red line, he found him and drove from Shenyang to Beijing with several bags of gelling materials. The slurry was prepared on site with clay soil and a certain amount of gelling material was added to prepare the slurry, and the backfill foundation was grouted. After the grouting was completed, the ground settlement was controlled and the construction was continued.
Later, Ling Xianchang used high-performance mineral-based gelling materials and their principles to study the comprehensive utilization of industrial solid waste resources and harmlessness.He gave an example, through the gelling materials he developed, he solidified the industrial tailings sand , and then reused the solidified tailings sand to fill the goaf. This can not only ensure that the ground does not sink and mining activities will proceed as usual, but also ensure that the tailings sand will not be stacked and polluted the environment. "Let these tailings sands come from wherever they come from."
Ling Xianchang claimed to be a "doctor" who is caused by geotechnical problems in civil engineering. As long as it is related to geotechnical engineering, he will treat any "illness" no matter how big or small it is. He believes that the project is nothing small. "It is a huge cost to delay a project for one day, and migrant workers are also waiting for the project to finish work on the construction site."
China Railway 17th Bureau Group Chairman Chen Hongwei and Ling Xianchang were friends for many years, and they first met because of engineering projects. After more than ten years of interaction, Chen Hongwei often said that Ling Xianchang was real, low-key, consistent in appearance, and could get along with migrant workers on the construction site.
In Chen Hongwei's observation, once a certain engineering problem was discovered, Ling Xianchang immediately became interested. "Don't ask whether the project is useful to him, how much energy you need to invest, how much labor you need to invest, and what rewards you will get. Once you find that it is a very valuable topic, don't say anything, let's study how to make this happen."
Ling Xianchang was interviewed. Photo provided by the interviewee. In addition to the identity of the teacher and the engineer of inheritance
, Ling Xianchang also taught at the School of Civil Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology. He still loves teaching students, and he takes classes from undergraduate to graduate students, and he likes to deal with young people.
He likes to mention the motto of Harbin Institute of Technology : "Strict specifications, and you can achieve your skills." He feels that this motto in the world is "the most rustic" and is the most valuable for scientific research in engineering. "Talent cultivation and scientific research work both pay attention to the process, and the process is more important than the results. You must always do everything according to the highest specifications, so that the final result can be achieved." He has been teaching for decades, and before class, he still has to open the courseware and go through it from beginning to end.
In the eyes of students, Ling Xianchang is "strict" and he also has rigorous requirements for the layout of various files.
student Yang Zhongnian remembered that once, he took the PPT of the project results display to Ling Xianchang's office to check with him. Ling Xianchang sat in front of the computer and began to re-check word by word. Not only words, but each rectangular box in PPT must be aligned with each other up, down, left and right, and the spacing between lines and lines, and words must be consistent. Ling Xianchang spent six hours carefully polishing a PPT of more than fifty pages in the office.
Yang Zhongnian said that this is different from the engineering professors he remembers: most engineering professors are serious in engineering and do not pay attention to text, but teacher Ling Xianchang was meticulous that every punctuation mark in the text was correct. Ling Xianchang once explained to Yang Zhongnian that this practice is respect for every expert. "You are not serious, why should the experts be serious?" After more than 0 years of
html, Ling Xianchang's students have formed this kind of consciousness: before handing in the project, even if they are almost done, they still have to read it carefully several times. "Sometimes I feel that it is impeccable. If I send it to him, he can find many problems for you."The habit left by studying in my early years, Ling Xianchang fell asleep at 2 a.m. every day and got up again at 8 a.m. He often circled around the desk in one day - he used a black Chinese-style wooden table to make a desk, a computer, two hard disks, an ashtray, a mobile phone stand and a tea tray were all the decorations on the table.
In the eyes of students, teacher Ling Xianchang is both a beacon on his academic path and a mentor on his life path.
Some of the students led by Ling Xianchang have become professors, doctoral supervisors and even principals in colleges and universities, and some have become senior engineers of . Student Su Lei remembers that when he was a doctoral student in his early years, his teacher Ling Xianchang paid for him to complete a year-long visiting course in the United States. Today, Su Lei is already a young professor and doctoral supervisor.
Ling Xian often recalled his early years. He was still doing geological research and went to a high mountain for geological exploration. Because the road was steep, a young graduate student who was traveling back and left him alone to continue moving forward along the determined route.On a cliff, he slipped down in the air, but fortunately he was caught by a protruding stone wall, which was so scared that he was sweating coldly. Then he sat on the hanging wall and smoked a cigarette, threw the cigarette butt, and continued to climb upwards. "There are rules for geology. Once a line is laid out, you must follow it all day long, crossing the mountain and passing water."
Today, Ling Xianchang is still "crossing mountains and passing water", moving slowly and firmly on the road of scientific research.
He is sixty years old, and long-term gout makes him walk slowly. Before going up and down the stairs, he stepped on the edge of the stairs with his left foot and placed his right foot along, limping every step. He hopes that he will "live for another sixty years" and continue to solve new problems that continue to emerge in engineering, and fill the gaps in those academic fields.
has been dealing with rock and soil for decades. Ling Xianchang felt that he seemed to have lived like rock and soil: as hard as rock, he cracked a lot of problems, and he also tangled with problems like clay.
Same question:
What things have you always adhered to in your life and work?
In life, I have always adhered to my own life rules. At work, I adhere to a principle of doing things: take it seriously whether it is your own business or other people's business. Less promises and more fulfillment.
When is the most difficult time you think? What is the reason for being able to persevere?
The most difficult time I was when I switched to a postdoctoral fellow in geotechnical engineering.
I have a personality: When I decide to do something, what I think of is not the difficulty, but constantly looking for solutions. There are certainly difficulties, but there are far more ways to solve the problem than difficulties.
What kind of achievements do you hope to achieve in the future and what expectations do you have for the future?
I hope to cultivate more excellent successors, and it is best to be a successor who is not afraid of hardships and is down-to-earth. At the same time, I hope to work with students to study and solve important scientific problems that need to be solved urgently in geotechnical engineering.
What is the greatest happiness you feel like you have?
The biggest happiness is that I have experienced several geotechnical engineering problems over the years, and I can solve them.
Beijing News reporter Zhou Siya Editor Chen Xiaoshu Proofreading Liu Yue
