Xiang’s research has been focused on the development of accurate and efficient design rules for high performance metallic structures as well as onshore and offshore wind turbine towers using experimental, numerical and analytical techniques. His research interests include high strength steel structures, aluminium alloy structures, stainless steel structures, metal 3D printed structures, structural stability and structural fire engineering.

Xiang obtained his PhD in 2018 at Imperial College London. The main theme of his PhD was material modelling and design of hot-rolled and cold-formed steel structures. He proposed constitutive material models that actually represent the stress-strain response of hot-rolled and cold-formed steels, which have been extensively used by researchers around the globe in their analytical, numerical and design models. These material models have recently been incorporated into the latest version of Eurocode 3: Part 1.14. He also extended a deformation-based design approach named the Continuous Strength Method (CSM) for the design of structural steel elements, which shows significant benefit over traditional design methods including increased structural safety, efficiency and accuracy.

After obtaining his PhD degree, Xiang worked as a Research Associate at Imperial College London on a European funded project “Stronger Steels in the Built Environment (STROBE)”. The main objective of the project was to increase the application of high performance strength steels in structural engineering, underpinned by state-of-the-art design standards, thus promoting a sustainable and resilient built environment that provides well-being to the society. He then worked at Johns Hopkins University as a visiting researcher on the design of wind turbine towers and University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in Structural Engineering before he joined Bristol in 2024.