Jinsheng (Frank) Lai 「赖近昇」
I am a M.Eng. student in Civil Engineering at South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
Research Interests: the structural analysis and design of offshore renewable energy systems, with a focus on floating structures—including floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), wave energy converters (WECs), and floating photovoltaic systems. I advance these through numerical simulation, physical experimentation, and data-driven methods, and I am especially interested in how advanced materials and AI-driven engineering can support more resilient and sustainable marine infrastructure.
I am seeking PhD positions for Fall 2027 intake.
Email: frankjslai@gmail.com
If my background and interests align with your group's research, I would be glad to hear from you—please feel free to reach out by email.
News
- [07/2026] Completed the hydrodynamic analysis and load-transfer work for the P4 paper.
- [06/2026] Built an internal computing cluster for our research group and open-sourced the full setup workflow.
- [05/2026] Published a conference paper on deep reinforcement learning for offshore wind power operation and maintenance at ICEPET.
- [04/2026] Published a journal paper in Polymers on the performance of GFRP from decommissioned wind turbine blades for wave energy converters.
- [09/2024] Began M.Eng. study in Civil Engineering at South China University of Technology, advised by Yan-Wen Li. Admission with Entrance Exam Waived.
- [06/2024] Received Outstanding Graduate, Hainan University.
- [10/2023] Won First Prize in the National University Structural Design Information Technology Contest, China.
Publications
[P2] Applications of Deep Reinforcement Learning in Optimization of Offshore Wind Power Operation and Maintenance.
Jin-Sheng Lai*. ICEPET 2026, accepted.
[P3] Structural reuse of decommissioned wind-turbine-blade GFRP in marine and civil infrastructure: performance and design of hybrid bonded-bolted GFRP-to-duplex stainless steel joints.
Jin-Sheng Lai, Tian-Hui Fan, Li Cheng, Yan-Wen Li*.
Construction and Building Materials (JCR Q1), Under review, 2026.
Research Experience
High-Value Repurposing of Decommissioned Wind Blade GFRP: Materials, Joints, and Marine Applications
Conducted material characterization of retired blade GFRP through mechanical testing and CT scanning, developed GFRP-duplex stainless steel bonded/bolted joint designs, and investigated an articulated multi-body wave energy converter through hydrodynamic simulation and wave tank testing.
CT Scanning, Mechanical Testing, Abaqus, AQWA, Wave Tank. Images: materials, joint design, system.
Modeling and Intelligent Operation and Maintenance of Offshore Wind Systems
Independently studied and implemented deep reinforcement learning from scratch, formulating offshore wind O&M as a Markov Decision Process with a hybrid state space (turbine health, environmental conditions, resource availability, and market signals) and a hybrid discrete-continuous action space. Trained and evaluated a DDPG agent on public and simulated data from a 20-turbine 5 MW offshore wind farm over a 3-year horizon: it outperformed DQN and PPO baselines in revenue, failure frequency, MTBF, and MTTR, and stayed robust under stressed conditions (wind-speed variance +20%, failure rate +15%). This work led to the ICEPET 2026 conference paper.
Python, PyTorch, DDPG, Markov decision process.
Environmental Sensitivity Analysis of a Floating Wind Turbine and Semi-submersible Foundation
Contributed to numerical modeling and environmental sensitivity analysis in ANSYS AQWA for a floating wind turbine and semi-submersible foundation. Assessed tower-base and tower-top motion responses across variations in wave height, wind speed, wave period, and wave-current incidence angle. The analysis identified wave height as the dominant driver of horizontal motion amplitudes, whereas wave period exerted a stronger influence on heave response.
ANSYS AQWA, Hydrodynamic Simulation, Environmental Sensitivity Analysis.
Compressive Response of 3D-Printed 2D Metamaterial Reinforced Composites with Diversified Geometries
Tested and evaluated the compressive behavior of 24 diverse 2D composite architectures, and proposed a comprehensive performance evaluation coefficient to screen for designs with superior specific energy absorption and specific strength.
3D Printing, Mechanical Testing.
Crack Recognition Based on Backpropagation Neural Networks
Engineered a Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network with optimized activation functions and cross-entropy loss with backpropagation for automated Structural Health Monitoring.
Python, Neural Networks.
Vibration Damping Performance Analysis of Graded Yield Metal Dampers in a Steel Frame Structure
Investigated the energy dissipation mechanism of graded yield metal dampers in steel frame structures through modal decomposition response spectrum analysis and elastic time-history analysis across minor, moderate, and major earthquake scenarios.
SAP2000, Seismic Analysis.
Flexural Property and Mechanism of Coir-FRP Seawater and Sea-Sand Concrete for Artificial Fish Reefs
Optimized coir-fiber-matrix compatibility through combined chemical modification, tested flexural strength, integrated a non-linear MATLAB prediction model, and used SEM analysis to study the fiber bridging toughening mechanism.
Lab Testing, MATLAB, SEM.
Education
M.Eng. in Civil Engineering, Sep. 2024-Expected Jun. 2027. GPA: 3.63/4.0. Admission with entrance exam waived.
B.Eng. in Civil Engineering, Sep. 2020-Jun. 2024. GPA: 3.61/4.0 (88.26/100).
Honors & Awards
- Outstanding Graduate, Hainan University, 2024.
- First Prize, National University Structural Design Information Technology Contest, China, 2023.
- First-Class Comprehensive Scholarship, Hainan University, 2021 and 2022.
- Meritorious Student, Hainan University, 2021 and 2022.









