Professor Wuqiang Yang

BSc, MSc, PhD (Tsinghua University), CEng, FIEE, SMIEEE
 
Prof Wuqiang Yang

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
The University of Manchester
Sackville Street
Manchester M60 1QD

Email:

Tel: 0161 306-4792

 

Biography

Professor Wuqiang Yang obtained all his degrees, BSc with Distinction 1982, MSc 1985 and PhD with Distinction 1988, from Tsinghua University in Beijing, which is the top science and engineering university in China. After three years being a Lecturer at Tsinghua University, he joined as Research Associate/Fellow  the Process Tomography Group at UMIST, who initiated process tomography research. He was appointed Lecturer in 1997 and now he is Professor of Electronic Instrumentation. His research is focused on industrial process tomography, especially electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). He has published over 200 scientific papers, and he holds 9 patents, including two international patents, which have been licensed to industry. His research and publications have received several awards, including the 1997 IEE/NPL Wheatstone Measurement Prize, the 1997 Honeywell Prize from the Institute of Measurement and Control and the 2000 IEE Ayrton Premium. He has been invited by many universities, research institutions and international conferences worldwide to give lectures/seminars/keynotes on ECT and its industrial applications. He is recognised by International Center for Scientific Research (France), as one of top 30 technology researchers in the world.

He is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of IET (formerly IEE) and Senior Member of IEEE. His biography has been included in Who's Who in Science and Engineering since 2002, Who's Who in the World since 2003, International Who's Who of Professionals since 2003, Dictionary of International Biography since 2004, and International Blue Book since 2005. In 2006 he received Global Research Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering and took sabbatical leave at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in USA as a visiting professor. In 2008 he received an Outstanding Organization award from IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society. Currently, he is organising a Special Issue for Measurement Science and Technology and organising an IEEE Workshop on Imaging Systems and Techniques. 

Memberships

Professor Yang's main research area is electrical capacitance tomography, including hardware, image reconstruction algorithms and industrial applications. He has received a number of awards for his research, including

  • 1997 IEE/NPL Wheatstone Measurement Prize
  • 1997 Honeywell Prize from the Institute of Measurement and Control
  • 2000 IEE Ayrton Premium

Research areas:

  • Sensors and sensing electronics, data acquisition, instrumentation, and virtual instruments
  • Industrial process tomography, electrical capacitance tomography, including hardware design, inverse problem, image reconstruction algorithms and indistrial applications
  • Multiphase measurement, including gas-oil-water three-component flows, wet gas flows, milk flows and multi-interface levels
  • Tomography-based control, fluidised bed dryer control 
  • Security imaging devices

Research projects:

  • Multi-interface level measurement, funded by SERC and Marinetech, 1992-1993
  • Imaging combustion flames, funded by Shell, 1992-1995
  • Measurement of gas-oil-water flows in pipelines, funded by SERC, DTI and Schlumberger, in collaboration with University of Leeds, 1993-1997
  • Universal electrical tomography system, funded by Solartron, 1997-1999
  • Measurement and control of gas-liquid and gas-solids flows, funded by EU-CRAFT, 1997-2000
  • Real-time image reconstruction, funded by Royal Sociey, 1999-2000
  • Imaging wet gas separation processes, funded by Shell, in collaboration with SPE and Twister (Holland), 1999-2002
  • Imaging gas-solids distribution in circulating fluidised beds, funded by British Council and Natural Science Foundation of China, in collaboration with Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1999-2002
  • Personnel landmine detection, funded by DERA, 2000
  • Image reconstruction and evaluation for ECT, funded by Royal Society, 2002
  • Security imaging devices, funded by ICIR (USA), in collaboration with Dallas / Fort Worth Airport, 2002-
  • Online milk flow meter, funded by Nedap (Holland), 2004-
  • Product quality control of fluidised bed dryers with tomographic imaging and online process modelling, funded by EPSRC, in collaboration with Oxford University, AstraZeneca, Sensatech, and Dupont (USA), 2005-2008
  • Tompgraphic imaging of insitu combustion, funded by Schlumberger, 2006-2008
  • Multi-modality tomography for multi-phase flow measurement, funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, in collaboration with Tianjin University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University and Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2006-2009
  • Dielectric and magnetic measurement and imaging, funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering as Distinguished Visiting Fellow, 2006
  • Fluidised bed drying tomography, funded by UMIP, 2008-2010
  • Online solids moisture measurement and distributed control of fluidised bed dryers, funded by EPSRC, 2008-2009
  • Quantifying wet-gas liquid production to improve productivity & reservoir management, funded by DTI, in collaboration with Schlumberger Cambridge Research and TUV-NEL, 2008-2011
  • Online moisture distribution measurement, distributed control and industrial demonstration, funded by EPSRC Follow-on Fund, 2009-2010
  • Online measurement of moisture distribution in pharmaceutical fluidised beds for drying, granulation and coating, funded by EPSRC and FinanceSouthEast Collaboration Fund, 2010-2011
  • Scale-up ECT imaging of pharmaceutical fluidised beds, funded by RAIS, 2010
  • Re-engineering and installation of a shoe scanner in Manchester Airport, funded by KTA, 2010

 

Possible PhD projects:

  1. Software for new generation ECT system. Since the first charge/discharge ECT system was developed at UMIST in 1991, we have been leading in this research area. Because of the limitation of the charge/discharge system, a new AC-based ECT system has been developed. While the system design received the IEE Ayrton Premium in 2000, more work needs to be done on software in Visual C++, including user interface and image reconstruction algorithms. The aim of this project is to demonstrate the world's best ECT system.
  2. Gas-oil-water flow measurement by ECT. To maximise production of oil, gas-oil-water flow measurement is highly demanded by the oil companies. Currently, radiation transducers are commonly used in multiphase flow meters. However, there are many problems, such as safety concerns, high cost and flow regime dependency. The aim of a current project, which is funded by TSB and in collaboration with Schlumberger and TUV-NEL, is to develop a gas/oil/water flow meter based on ECT, microwave and other non-radiation sensors. This PhD project will be part of the TSB project, but focuses on ECT for multiphase flow measurement.
  3. Gas-solids flow meter with ECT and electrostatic transducer. Currently, all gas-solids flow meters available are flow-regime-dependent. It has been confirmed that ECT can be used to measure the concentration in a cross section of a gas-solids flow accurately without the flow-regime-dependency problem. It has been also confirmed that electrostatic transducers can be used to measure solids flow velocity by cross correlation. The aim of this project is to develop a flow-regime-independent gas-solids flow meter by combining ECT with electrostatic transducers. A test rig will be designed for lab experiments. This project is related to a real industrial application in USA.


Currently supervise 2 Postdoctoral RAs and 1 PhD student:

  1. Haigang Wang -- Solids moisture measurement in fluidised bed dryers by CFD modelling and ECT
  2. Yi Li -- Water-liquid-ratio measurement in oil pipeline by ECT 
  3. Hwili -- Multi-modality multi-interface measurment in oil separators 

Former research students:

  1. Dimitrios Georgakopoulos -- National Measurement Institute, Australia
  2. Nas Chondronasios -- Compucon SA, Greece
  3. Qian Xie -- Intel, China
  4. Faisal Bukhari -- Newcastle University, UK
  5. Min Yang -- Sound Dragon Electronics and Acoustics Ltd, China
  6. Alejandro Gonzales-Nakazawa -- University of Durham, UK
  7. Bin Cheng -- VCA Technology Ltd, UK
  8. Idris Ismail -- University Technology Petronas, Malaysia 
  9. Xiaohui Hu -- Wuhan Kangda Electrical Co., Ltd, China

Academic visitors:

  1. Professor Shi Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences/North China Electric Power University
  2. Professor Huaxiang Wang, Tianjin University, China 
  3. Dr Shengmin Ge, Associate Professor, Harbin Institute of Technology, China 
  4. Dr Lihui Peng, Associate Professor, Tsinghua University, China 
  5. Dr Zhaotian Zhang, Director, Natural Science Foundation of China
  6. Professor Markus Zahn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 
  7. Jimmy Kjersgaard-Rasmussen, PhD student, Technical University of Denmark
  8. Dr Yanjuan Yang, Associate Professor, South China University of Technology, China
  9. Professor Yan Han, Vice President, North China University
  10. Dr Dixiang Cheng, Associate Professor, National University of Defence Technology, China 
  11. Dr Xiang Deng, Associate Professor, Beijing Jiaotong University, China