engineering

Li Guohao

Li Guohao is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Li Guohao rather than just read about it. In short: Li Guohao (Chinese: 李国豪; pinyin: Lǐ Guóháo; Wade–Giles: Li Kuo-hao; born 13 April 1913 in Mei County, Guangdong; died 23 February 2005 in Shanghai) was a Chinese structural engineer and bridge engineering expert, known as Suspension Bridge Li. His method of calculation, with a high degree of precision although of extreme complexity, can cut down the cost of engineering and promote bridge stability.

Key takeaways

Li Guohao belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Li Guohao to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Li Guohao from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Li Guohao (Chinese: 李国豪; pinyin: Lǐ Guóháo; Wade–Giles: Li Kuo-hao; born 13 April 1913 in Mei County, Guangdong; died 23 February 2005 in Shanghai) was a Chinese structural engineer and bridge engineering expert, known as Suspension Bridge Li. His method of calculation, with a high degree of precision although of extreme complexity, can cut down the cost of engineering and promote bridge stability. Li also served as Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) of Shanghai, making him a politician of provincial-ministerial rank.

Biography At the age of 16, Li, the son of a poor farming family, completed the preparatory course for Tongji University in Shanghai and started studying civil engineering there in 1931, graduating with distinction in 1936. Just one year later, Li took over the seminars for steelwork and steel bridges from his German predecessor – in those days Tongji University had many visiting German scientists on its staff, including Erich Wilfried Reuleaux (1883-1967), professor for railways and transport in Darmstadt (Germany), who was in China from 1934 to 1937. Furnished with a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Li started his research work under Kurt Klöppel at TU Darmstadt in the autumn of 1938. He was awarded a doctorate in 1940 for his groundbreaking dissertation on the practical calculation of suspension bridges according to second-order theory. Together, Klöppel and Li published further research findings on the quantitative analysis of suspension bridges. Turning to stability theory, during the drafting of DIN 4114 (German Standard of stability of steel structures), the excellent article appeared on the sufficient criterion for the branching point of elastic equilibrium, which Klöppel and Li explained using the example of the buckling of struts – and their theoretical findings also applied to overturning, plate buckling and torsional-flexural buckling. Li submitted his habilitation thesis to the Faculty of Construction at Darmstadt TH in January 1942. After the war, he returned to Shanghai, to take up a post as professor at Tongji University in 1946. While there, he wrote textbooks on the design of steel structures (1952), steel bridges (1952) and bridge dynamics (1955). Li was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. One year later he became pro-rector of Tongji University and established the Faculty of Applied Mechanics, where he lectured in structural dynamics and the mechanics of plates and shells. Li already had a reputation as a bridges engineer by now and influenced the design of several bridges over the Yangtze. Like many intellectuals, Li was ostracised as a reactionary scientific force during China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but was rehabilitated in 1977 and became rector of his Alma Mater. Li remained productive even during the Cultural Revolution. During the 1980s, Li wrote books on earthquake engineering (1980), engineering works subjected to explosions (1989) and, of course, the calculation of bridges (1988). The 1980s can be quite rightly called the preparatory phase for the building of large bridges in China, with Li as its founding father. Li Guohao participated in several famous bridge designs and constructions such as Chengdu-Kunming Railway Bridge and Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. His services to scientific-technical developments were acknowledged by numerous awards, e.g. the Goethe Medal (1982), honorary doctorates from Tongji University (1984) and TU Darmstadt (1985), member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences (1994) and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize (1995). Due to his outstanding achievements, Li was rated as one of top 10 world-famous bridge experts by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering in 1981.

Works with Kurt Klöppel: Hängebrücken mit besonderer Stützbedingung des Versteifungsträgers, in: Der Stahlbau 13 (1940), No. 21/22, pp. 109-116. (in German) Praktische Berechnung von Hängebrücken nach der Theorie II. Ordnung. Einfeldrige und durchlaufende Versteifungsträger mit konstantem und veränderlichen Trägheitsmoment, in: Der Stahlbau 14 (1941), No. 14/15, pp. 65-69 & No. 16/18, pp. 78-84. (in German) with Kurt Klöppel: Berechnung von Hängebrücken nach der Theorie II. Ordnung unter Berücksichtigung der Nachgiebigkeit der Hänger, in: Der Stahlbau 14 (1941), No. 19/20, pp. 85-88. (in German) with Kurt Klöppel: Das hinreichende Kriterium für den Verzweigungspunkt des elastischen Gleichgewichts, in: Der Stahlbau 16 (1943), No. 6/7, pp. 17-21. (in German) Ermittlung der Einflußlinien von Stabwerken auf geometrischem Wege, in: Der Stahlbau 16 (1943), No. 12/13, pp. 45-52 & No. 14/16, pp. 58-64. (in German) with Kurt Klöppel: Das hinreichende Kriterium für den Verzweigungspunkt des elastischen Gleichgewichts, in: Der Stahlbau 16 (1943), No. 6/7, pp. 17-21. (in German) Analysis of Box Girder and Truss Bridges. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag 1988. with A. Chen, A., 2001. Neuere Großbrücken in China, in: Stahlbau 70 (2001), No. 9, pp. 661-666. (in German)

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Li Guohao

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Li Guohao claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Li Guohao before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Li Guohao ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Li Guohao

In research: Li Guohao appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Li Guohao in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Li Guohao is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1913 births, 2005 deaths, Chairpersons of the CPPCC Shanghai Municipal Committee, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Li Guohao outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Li Guohao in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Li Guohao means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Li Guohao out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Li Guohao in simple terms?

Why does Li Guohao matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Li Guohao?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Li Guohao.