Career Interest

General

• PhD major in engineering mechanics and minor in electrical and computer engineering with 5 years work experience as a civil engineer.
  
• Solid FE background plus excellent skills of other numerical methods for engineering analysis.
  
• Strong teamwork ability and self-learning capability.
  

Education

• Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics   University of Florida. Gainesville, FL. Aug. 1998 - Aug. 2003. major GPA:4.0.
  
• Master in Engineering Mechanics   University of Florida. Gainesville, FL. Aug. 1998 - Aug. 2001   GPA:4.0.
  
• Master of Engineering in Engineering Mechanics   Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech. Wuhan, Hubei, P.R.China. Aug. 1990 - July. 1993.
  
• Bachelor of Engineering in Engineering Mechanics   Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech. Wuhan, Hubei, P.R.China. Aug. 1986 - July 1990.
  

Skills

• Languages:
  FORTRAN, C++, MATLAB, SABER, MAST, Shell
  
  
• Numerical methods:
  Finite Element Method (8+ years), Finite Difference Method, Boundary Element Method, Meshless Method
  
  
• Tools:
  MATLAB, SABER, MAXWELL, ABAQUS, IDEAS, AUTOCAD
  

Employment

• Civil Engineer North China Electronic Power Design Institute (NCEPDI), Beijing, P.R.China. July 1993 - July 1998.   Civil design and structural analysis for thermal power plants.
• Graduate Research Assistant Computational Labortory for Solid Mechanics (CLESM ), Aerospace Engineering, Mechanics & Engineering Science (AeMES ) department, University of Florida. Aug. 1998 - present. Develop finite element (FE) lower order models.
• Graduate Teaching Assistant Aerospace Engineering, Mechanics & Engineering Science department ( AeMES) teaching assistant for course Statcis, Mechanics of Materials and Numerical Methods .
• Graduate Research Assistant Engineering Mechanics department, Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech. (HUST), P.R.China, Sep. 1990 - July 1993. Develop semi-roof shallow shell hybrid element for stress analysis of plates and shells.
• Graduate Teaching Assistant Engineering Mechanics department, Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech. (HUST), P.R.China, Sep. 1990 - July 1993.

Main Projects

• Model-order reduction for efficient simulation of coupled nonlinear electro-magneto-thermal problems. PhD dissertation. Sep. 99 - Aug. 03.
  Developed new coordinate-transfomation/model-order reduction techniques and novel computational methods for efficient simulation of coupled electro-magneto-thermal problems for Power Magnetic Components with nonlinear static and dynamic hysteresis.
  
• Integrated Product and Process Design (IPPD) projects. funded by Lockheed-Martin. Sep. 01 - May 02.
  Assistant in coaching a team of multidisciplinary undergraduate students in using the nonlinear finite-element code ABAQUS to model advanced micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) device.
  
• Model reduction techniques for MEMS simulations. DARPA composite CAD program. Sep. 98 - Aug. 00.
  Developed efficient model reduction code using FORTRAN based on the Lanczos's method and WYD method in structural dynamics and implement the code to commercial CFDRC code.
  
• Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant project. Chief structure designer. Sep. 97 - Apr. 98.
  First IGCC project in P.R.China.
  
• Gaojing power plant reconstruction project (60MW). Jan. 96 - Jan. 98. Beijing. Chief structure desinger.
  
• Qinhuangdao power plant project (60MW). Oct. 93 - Dec. 95. Hubei, P.R.China. Chief structure designer.
  
• Elbasan power plant rehabilitation project. Dec. 97 - May 98. Elbasan, Albania.
  
• The hybrid semi-loof shallow shell element for stress analysis of plates and shells. Master thesis project. Sep. 90- Jul. 93.
  Hybrid element formulation and software development for shallow shell stress analysis. Programming with FORTRAN.
  

Selected Publications

Journal papers

1. L. Vu-Quoc, V. Srinivas, Y. Zhai, "A generalized unit system for concise electromagnetic formulation and accurate numerical solutions". Journal of Computational Physics, vol.181, No.2, pp.407-429, 2002. (pdf)
2. L. Vu-Quoc, V. Srinivas, Y. Zhai, "Finite-element analysis of advanced multilayer capacitors", International Journal for Numerical Method in Engineering, vol.58, No.3, pp.397-461, 2003. (pdf)
3. L. Vu-Quoc, Y. Zhai, K. Ngo, "Efficient simulation of coupled circuit-field problems: Generalized Falk method". IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol.23, No.8, pp.1209-1219, 2004. (pdf)
4. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, W. Farrell, "Quasi-electrostatic field analysis and simulation of Martian and terrestrial dust devils". Journal of Geophysical Research, v111, E06016, doi:10.1029/2005JE002618, 2006.
5. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, "A flexible and robust direct reconstruction method for magnetospheric radio tomography". Radio Science, vol.40, no.3, RS3004, May 2005.
6. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, "An orthogonal projection and regularization (OPR) technique for magnetospheric radio tomography". Journal of Geophysical Research, vol.111, no.A3, A03207, March, 2006.
7. S. Cummer, Y. Zhai, W. Hu, D. Smith, L. Lopez, M. Stanley, "Measurements and implications of the relationship between lightning and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes". Geophysical Research Letters , vol.32, no.8, L08811, 30 Apr 2005.
8. Y. Zhai, L. Vu-Quoc, "Analysis of power magnetic components with nonlinear static hysteresis: Finite element formulation". IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol.41, no.7, pp.2243-2256, 2005.
9. Y. Zhai, L. Vu-Quoc, "Analysis of power magnetic components with nonlinear static hysteresis: Proper orthogonal decomposition and model reduction". IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, submitted, 2005.
10. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, J. Green, B. Reinisch, M. Kaiser, M. reiner, K. Goetz, "Magnetospheric radio tomography: An IMAGE and WIND experiment". Geophysical Research Letters, to be submitted 25 Oct 2004.
11. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, J. Green, B. Reinisch, I. Christopher, R. Mutel, J. Pickett, D. Gurnett, "Magnetospheric radio tomography: A Cluster experiment". Geophysical Research Letters, to be submitted 25 Oct 2004.
12. Y. Zhai, L. Vu-Quoc, "On the various Krylov-based model reduction methods - An overall comparison of Lanczos, WYD, inverse Lanczos and inverse WYD methods". International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, to be submitted.

Conference papers

1. L. Vu-Quoc, Y. Zhai, K. Ngo, "Coordinate transformation and model reduction for efficient simulation of coupled circuit-field problems". Proceedings of the 32th Power Electronic Specialists Conference, vol.4, pp.2109-2114, June 2001, Vancouver, Canada (pdf). Also at the Symposium: Computational Methods for Adaptive Structures and MEMS, 6th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics, August 2001, Dearborn, Michigan.
2. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, J. Green, B. Reinisch, I. Christopher, R. Mutel, J. Pickett, D. Gurnett, C. P. Escoubet, "Magnetospheric Radio Tomography: Theory and CLUSTER Experiments", American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, 2004, San Francisco, California
3. Y. Zhai, S. Cummer, D. Smith, L. Lopez, "Measurements of Current and Charge Transfer in Lightning Associated with RHESSI-Detected Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes", American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, 2005, San Francisco, California (abstract).

Achievements

• International Student Outstanding Academic Achievement Awards , University of Florida. 2000.
• International Graduate Student Achievement Awards, University of Florida. 1999.
• Award for Excellent Achievements in Scientific Research in NCEPDI. North China Electric Power Design Institute. 1995.
• Guanghua Scholarship. Huazhong University of Science & Technology. 1992.