Biography
Dr Farhad Huseynov is a Senior Research Associate at the Laing O'Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology and the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC). He is working with Professor Campbell Middleton and Dr Jennifer Schooling. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the Middle East Technical University and a Master's degree in Structural Engineering from the University of Sheffield. He was then awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship to study for a PhD at the University College Dublin.
His PhD research efforts were on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of bridges using rotation measurements. There is a lack of research in bridge SHM relating to the use of rotations for bridge condition assessment as the sensitivity of commercially available rotation sensors is not adequate to capture the small rotations occurring during bridge live loading. He developed a technique using accelerometers that can measure rotations, generated by pendulum behaviour caused by gravity, with microradians accuracy. This achievement is by far the most accurate rotation measurements available in the literature and has the potential to become a landmark finding in the bridge SHM field. He then developed an effective bridge condition assessment methodology that can identify defects in bridges using direct rotation measurements. The method has been successfully validated on a full-scale railway bridge. It is one of the first successful demonstrations of a damage detection application on a real bridge.
Before joining the Laing O'Rourke Centre, Farhad had worked as a structural engineer in several industry-leading consultancy companies. He has extensive experience in the design, testing and assessment of bridges. He has worked on a wide range of projects including, but not limited to, medium-and long-span bridge design works and testing some of the iconic bridges in the UK such as the Queensferry Crossing.
His current role in Cambridge is to lead the research project, undertaken in collaboration with Network Rail and Microsoft, aiming to quantify the performance of bridges using digital twins. The project is funded by Construction Innovation Hub (CIH) and the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB). It aims to showcase the practical application of real-time data analytics integrated with digital twins in efforts to provide useful insights to bridge owners about the performance of their bridge assets.
