Civil Engineering MEng

You will undertake a long-term individual research project appropriate to your particular interests. It normally takes the form of an investigative, development or design project ending as a detailed final report. Projects involve lab work, field investigations or computer modelling and require data collection and analysis.

Working in groups, you'll design and plan a major civil engineering project. Typical projects include water works, major highway schemes and retail parks. Staff and visiting professional engineers provide guidance.

This module is designed to deliver an understanding of sustainability principles and how, in particular, transport infrastructure engineering as well as the wider construction industry can contribute to sustainable development.

The module will include the following themes:

• Sustainability: an introduction to sustainability, sustainable development; sustainable construction; and how transport infrastructure engineering can contribute to sustainable construction.
• Environmental impacts of infrastructure construction: a review of the positive and negative environmental impacts of construction including resources and waste and energy and climate change.
• Social impacts of infrastructure construction: a review of the positive and negative social impacts of construction including; corporate social responsibility, responsible sourcing, poverty reduction and sustainable development goals.
• Assessment: indicators, assessment systems, environmental life-cycle assessment, life-cycle cost analysis.

Delivery

Assessment method

This module will introduce the components of railway track structures, conventional and otherwise. It will include analysis of forces on a railway track and consequent deflections, stresses, alignment design principles, and an overview of the railway as a total system including operational issues, signalling and control.

Assessment method

This module is assessed by individual and group coursework (40%) and an exam (60%).

Delivery

Assessment method

This module covers the design of highway alignments, including curvatures, gradients, number of lanes, junction design and drainage. It also includes analysis and design of pavement structures and surfaces using different techniques and materials together with the deterioration mechanisms involved.

It module aims to:

• embed the ability to design sensible and functional highway alignments
• introduce the design of pavement structures
• give understanding of the roles and design of different pavement surfaces

Delivery

Assessment method

This module considers the effects of wind on structures. It shows how the wind loading codes are developed from first principles and how they can be applied to predict wind induced forces in structures. The dynamic response of structures to wind is studied with the help of wind tunnel tests.

This module is delivered through six hours of lectures and computer-based tutorials each week and covers the principles of water height variation, ocean forces (from waves and tides) and energy conversion into electrical power and to the design of energy production systems.

This module considers some of the most commonly-used system reliability assessment techniques applied to support system management.

It covers the construction of reliability models that use basic component failure information to describe specific system failure modes, the qualitative and quantitative analyses of these models, and the critical evaluation of systems using the analytical results. The models will be discussed in the context of their application to engineering systems and infrastructure assets.

The module aims to provide students with:

• an understanding of the basic statistical, probabilistic and mathematical concepts required to predict the reliability of components and systems.
• a detailed knowledge of the most commonly used system reliability assessment techniques.
• the ability to critically evaluate systems and assets using mathematical models.

Assessment method

This module will be assessed by an in-class test (20%) and an exam (80%).

The module will look into advanced structural analysis methods including finite element, non-linear analysis and stability. It will also look into the analysis of dynamic systems.

This module will reinforce and advance some of the principles of soil mechanics previously learnt, and describe the principles of Critical State Soil Mechanics (CSSM), a model used to predict the behaviour of soils.

It includes revision of previous concepts, shear box and triaxial tests data analysis, critical state line, elasticity and plasticity, development of an elasto-plastic soil model, and constitutive model application in numerical simulations.

Students will learn about and conduct their own triaxial tests on soil samples within the laboratory such that they can obtain constitutive model parameters for the soil. Students will learn to use a finite element method (FEM) software package that is popular for geotechnical analyses as well as the principles of physical modelling using a geotechnical centrifuge. The coursework element will require students to use constitutive model parameters obtained from triaxial testing within FEM analyses.

The FEM analyses will include

1. the replication of the triaxial tests and verification of results against analytical predictions (using CSSM), and
2. simulation of a boundary value problem (e.g. vertical loading of a foundation), for which they will compare numerical predictions against a centrifuge test data set provided to them.

Delivery

Assessment method

The module will look into the design of specialised structural systems such as composite beams and floors, portal frames, tubular trusses, and pre-stressed concrete beams and slabs. It will also look into connection behaviour, the design of steel moment connections and sway stability of buildings. A major group design exercise will illustrate the approach to the design of complete structures.

This course (module) introduces buoyancy driven and geophysical fluid flows relevant to civil engineering. We will explore the roles of density and rotation in determining ocean and atmopheric behaviour, and in pollutant dispersion. This content falls within 4 sections :

1. Rotating flows
2. Convection – plumes and jets 
3. Gravity currents 
4. Kelvin Helmholtz instability 

Each section introduced through guided student-led work followed by an experiment visualising and quantifying aspects of the flows.

This module is a combination of the theoretical and practical aspects of setting-out for Civil Engineering.

The theoretical aspects will provide students with the knowledge and understanding to undertake the practical aspects, where students will work in small groups to design, plan, undertake and report on a series of practical surveys involving different engineering surveying techniques and associated inter-disciplinary tools such as CAD  (individuals and groups are responsible for management and organisation of their projects, with staff members available for consultation and guidance).

The module will use the most advanced engineering surveying techniques related to:

• the determination of the plan coordinates of control points using GNSS surveying with a GNSS instrument;
• the establishment of setting-out points with designed plan coordinates using a total station instrument;
• the establishment of setting-out points with designed plan coordinates using a GNSS instrument;
• the determination of the heights of setting-out points using levelling with a level instrument.

The practical surveys will have a specific focus on the use of total station and GNSS instruments for the setting-out of a road and a trench designed using Civil-3D software, along with an assessment of the quality of each of the engineering surveying techniques used.