Shangtong’s research interests focus on the deterioration of building materials and its effects on the structure/infrastructure. Understanding the materials properties and the deterioration mechanisms at different scales is key to determining the performance of civil structures in terms of both safety and serviceability. Specifically his research looks into three main areas:

• Corrosion of reinforced concrete structures and its effects on the structures, e.g., cracking of concrete, bond degradation etc. His strength in this area is modelling the cracking process and crack width of concrete under both reinforcement corrosion and applied load. A combination of analytical, numerical and experimental approaches has been adopted.
• Whole life assessment and management of infrastructure. His interest in this area lies in assessing current state of pipelines by appropriate monitoring approaches and developing rational tools for risk classification. A variety of materials are examined, e.g., cast iron, concrete. Applicaitons include structural intregrity of burried water/sewer pipes and offshore pipelines. 
• Multi-scales investigation of cementitious materials and application of nanotechnology in the context of increasing the durability of structures. This is his recently established interest and expertise is being developed. His research in this area is concerned with how cementitious materials are behaved at different scales under various conditions and how the engineering properties are influenced by the changes at nano/micro scale in a quantitative manner.

• Fracture mechanics
• Cementitious materials
• Durability of civil engineering structures 
• Failure prediction and whole-life management of infrastructure

• Structural analysis
• Building materials
• Fracture mechanics
• Finite element method

I currently teach:

• CL207 Structural Mechanics and Materials
• CL313 Structural Engineering