Yen Lei, VOO, Ir. Dr. Adj. A/Professor

CEO & Director, Founder of Dura Technology Sdn. Bhd.

PEng, MIEM, PhD, BEng

Chair：Xudong Shao, Professor

Time： 2/13/2017, Mon.,15:00~17:00

Venue：Academic hall , South Buding

Yen Lei VOO is executive director and founder of Dura Technology Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia. He graduated with 1st Class Honours in Civil Engineering from The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Australia, in 2000, and with his PhD in 2004 from the same institution. This is where he was introduced to Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC), a cutting-edge concrete formula that embraces the quality of both concrete and steel, which makes it so durable, flexible and sustainable.

In 2006, he founded Dura Technology Sdn. Bhd. based on his interest and knowledge in UHPC and his passion to create a more sustainable and environment friendly future. He saw the shortcomings of the existing bridge construction systems and was convinced UHPC can fill in the gaps. Dr Voo reformulated UHPC according to the local context and needs and branding it for commercialization. During this 10 years course, he often travels to educate related industries and governmental sectors about UHPC. He has come out with bridge designs ideally suited for construction with UHPC and, to date, the Dura company has supplied or constructed about 100 UHPC bridges in Malaysia, with a further 10 bridges at various stages of construction. In 2016, his design of the 100 metre span Batu 6 Bridge obtained the PCI award for best International Transportation Structure.

Voo Y. L. is an Adjunct Associate Professor of UNSW Sydney, being an avid believer that good and strong foundations in education will bring the people and nations to even greater levels of achievements. With four Malaysian ‘Book of Records’ in hand, he is aiming for more marvels to be erected in the grounds of Malaysia and around the globe.

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is an advanced cementitious-based composite material that offers new opportunities for infrastructure works, building constructions and many niche markets. In the last two decades UHPC has been used for both structural and non-structural precast components in many countries. However, this outstanding technology has struggled to become a main-stream technology for everyday use due to lack of design codes and due to initial high investment costs of manufacturing facilities. Moreover, the high UHPC material cost makes it hard to compete with conventional designs optimized for other materials. Most projects in these countries have been motivated by government agencies as demonstration projects intended to encourage further implementation. However, for most of the countries, the follow-up implementation has been slow. Both private and governmental bodies are increasing their directives for the attention and initiative towards exploiting UHPC as a future concrete construction material, in the belief that UHPC technology embraces a more complete solution for sustainable construction with favorable life cycle values.

This lecture will briefly present the background and R&D of UHPC technology which was initiated by DURA Technology Sdn Bhd since 2006. Various examples on the application of UHPC technology especially in the context of Malaysia and Singapore will be given. The examples presented will be focused in those past successful and present projects and other potential applications of UHPC technology that are either in designed stage or yet to be discovered. Some of the example will be on the ten equal spans, total 420-metre-long, Kg Baharu-Kg Teluk Bridge and the single span 100-metre-long Batu 6 Bridge which was recently won the 2016 PCI Design Award as the best international infrastructure system. Other examples are on internet transmission tower; light-weight precast bathroom unit (PBU); external wall for precast-prefinished-volumetric-construction (PPVC); retaining wall; portal frame structure and others. At the end of the presentation, participants should be aware of how UHPC came into the construction industry as a futuristic material for applications, ideas, or solutions to current engineering problems. Their imagination should be sparked by the case study references presented.