The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering offers graduate programs leading to Master of Science, Master of Engineering and Doctorate Degrees in Civil Engineering in four options: Structural Engineering, Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, and Transportation Engineering. Research in structures and materials focuses on concrete behavior with a blend of computational and experimental modeling to characterize diversified phenomena such as corrosion, durability modeling, shrinkage, creep, repair and fatigue. Other areas of research include concrete durability; finite element modeling of intact or damaged structures for assessment, strengthening and/or repair, nonlinear finite element analysis of mitered bends, laminated shell elements, steel connections, reinforced concrete and slabs on grade; structural optimization, boundary elements, structural dynamics, and nondestructive testing. Water-resources projects include recharge problems, groundwater contamination problems and sea water intrusion, numerical techniques, remote sensing applications in water resources, watershed modeling of rain-fall-runoff relationships, evapotranspiration studies in arid zones, and urban hydrology. Research in the environmental engineering area emphasizes petrochemical and hazardous waste treatment, evaluation of wastewater treatment plants, disinfection and biological treatment, removal of viruses through slow sand filtration, and reuse of wastewater effluents for desert greening. Research in the geotechnical engineering area includes soil-structure interaction, local soil and foundation problems, mineralogy and fabric of soils, constitutive modeling of soils, nonlinear numerical analysis, soil stabilization, soil dynamics and geoenvironment. Research in transportation includes areas of highway safety, intersection safety, pedestrian safety, signal optimization, intercity transportation demand modeling; disaggregate behavior modeling, pavement materials specification, modification, modeling, analysis and pavement management system, and quality control and quality assurance.
The department has the following laboratories which are all equipped with state of the art equipment: · Structural Laboratories: Concrete testing laboratory, stress analysis laboratory, structural mechanics laboratory, heavy structures laboratory, building research station, and corrosion laboratory,
Admission to the graduate programs requires fulfilling all requirements of the College of Graduate and Interdisciplinary Studies. To be considered for admission to the doctoral program, an applicant must hold a Master of Science degrees from a university of recognized standing in Civil Engineering. Holders of Master of Engineering (non-thesis) can be considered with certain deficiency courses.