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Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Course Descriptions

Students must refer to the Registrar's web site or the Graduate School of Engineering's web site to determine the courses that are offered in any given semester. All courses are four semester hours (4SH) unless otherwise stated.

CIVE 5270 Environmental Protection and Management
Examines public and private environmental quality management and resource protection systems. Considers regulatory issues, risk management approaches, local vs. regional impacts, long-term sustainability, and economic/financial issues. Covers selected current topics and a broad range of specific environmental issues. Prereq. Junior, senior, or graduate standing.

CIVE 5271 Solid and Hazardous Waste Management
Introduce various aspects of integrated solid waste management system and hazardous waste management practices. Includes both engineering principles as well as socioeconomic and regulatory issues surrounding solid and hazardous waste management. Provides sufficient background to enable the student to understand, evaluate, and critique the design of and the decisions in various waste management alternatives. Prereq. Junior, senior, or graduate standing.

CIVE 5321 Geoenvironmental Engineering
Covers definitions and regulations, soil formation and mineralogy, hydraulic conductivity measurements, reactive contaminant transport through fine-grained soils, landfill and liners design, and seepage barriers and cutoff walls. Introduces site characterization and remediation. Prereq. Junior, senior, or graduate standing.

CIVE 5373 Transportation Planning and Engineering
Discusses urban transportation planning and engineering for modes other than highway. Covers travel demand forecasting for both the short and long term including impact analysis methods, simple elasticity models, and the four-step model system of trip generation, trip distribution, modal split, and network assignment. Introduces transit service analysis and design. Other topics include capacity, service, and engineering design basics for different travel modes, such as bus, airport, rail, and bicycle. Considers the environmental impact, economic evaluation, and financial impact of different modes of transportation. Prereq. Junior, senior, or graduate standing; engineering students only.

CIVE 5376 Traffic Engineering
Explores traffic flow theory and measurement, capacity and level of service analysis for intersections and urban arterials, intersection layout design, intersection signal plan design for both isolated intersections and arterials, parking analysis and design, and congestion mitigation and traffic management. Offers students an opportunity to practice with standard software. Prereq. Junior, senior, or graduate standing; engineering students only.

CIVE 5978 Independent Study (1-4 SH)
Offers theoretical or experimental work under individual faculty supervision. Prereq. Junior, senior, or graduate standing and permission of advisor.

CIVE 6964 Co-op Work Experience (0 SH)
Provides eligible students with an opportunity for work experience. Prereq. Permission of advisor.

CIVE 7220 Construction Management
Presents all aspects of construction management, with emphasis on cost and schedule. Provides conceptual and detailed cost estimates and network-based scheduling techniques (CPM and PERT). Covers project cash flow and finances. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7221 Construction Project Control and Organization (2SH)
Overviews the organization of construction firms at the general corporate level and the project level. Covers cost, schedule, budget, and financial control of projects. Also examines the flow of information between parties to the project. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7230 Legal Aspects of Civil Engineering
Overviews the U.S. legal system and the theories necessary for the comprehension of business and contractual liabilities. Discusses various types of contracts, forms of business ownership, claims and disputes, and environmental law. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7231 Alternative Project Delivery Systems in Construction (2SH)
Offers a comprehensive overview of alternative construction project delivery systems in the public and private sectors; project life cycle including project development, schedule, cost and risk management, quality assurance/quality control, project management, and project closeout; innovative financing strategies including contractor financing, franchises, and super turnkey. Focuses on the analysis of design/bid/build execution compared to design/build and construction management systems of delivery. Examines international projects, contracts, and partnering options—for example JVs and alliances—as vehicles to ensure the meeting of project objectives. Uses case studies to identify and practice the management skills required for successful D/B project execution including effective communication, negotiations, and team building. Prereq. CIVE 7220; engineering students only.

CIVE 7240 Construction Equipment and Modeling
Focuses on the selection and application of earthmoving equipment. Topics include equipment production systems and cost analysis, simulation modeling of equipment operations, statistical aspects of computer simulation, and risk analysis fundamentals.

CIVE 7250 Environmental Chemistry
Examines applications of chemistry to environmental engineering. Covers properties of water and pollutants, acid-base reactions, pH, alkalinity, equilibrium chemistry, chemical kinetics, chemical thermodynamics, coordination chemistry, precipitation-dissolution reactions, surface chemistry, adsorption-desorption, redox reactions, and organic chemistry as it relates to the environment. Includes relevant laboratory exercises such as colorimetry, gravimetric, and electrochemical methods; atomic absorption spectrophotometry; and ion and gas chromatography. Prereq. Two semesters of undergraduate chemistry; engineering students only.

CIVE 7251 Environmental Biological Processes
Examines microbiology with emphasis on biological processes in environmental engineering applications. Topics include cell structure, morphology, cell nutrition and growth, energy transfer and utilization, aerobic and anaerobic microbial metabolism, biological wastewater process theory and modeling, biological nutrients removal, and disinfection of relevant microorganisms. Includes relevant laboratory exercises of treatment parameters used to monitor the biological processes, such as BOD, TOC, COD, gravimetric methods, and dissolved oxygen. Also covers enzyme kinetics and evaluation of kinetic coefficients for biotreatment. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7252 Water and Wastewater Treatment Processes
Covers design principles and theory of removal of impurities from water. Treatment unit operations and processes typically include aeration, screening, coagulation and flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, ion exchange, activated carbon adsorption, and disinfection. Covers wastewater treatment with emphasis on secondary municipal treatment processes including preliminary treatment, primary clarification, activated sludge systems, aerated lagoons, aeration and mixing theory, fixed film biological treatment systems, anaerobic treatment systems, residue utilization, and disposal. Prereq. CIVE 7251 and permission of instructor.

CIVE 7253 Advanced Municipal and Industrial Wastewater Treatment Processes
Examines industrial wastewater problems with design considerations for industrial solids and liquid wastes combined with unit operations and processes used for advanced municipal wastewater treatment systems design. Topics include nutrients removal, advanced chemical treatment technologies, land treatment, membrane technologies, industrial waste characterization, industrial waste survey techniques, residuals management, and recycle or reuse of liquid and solid streams. Offers case studies of major industries. Prereq. CIVE 7252; engineering students only.

CIVE 7260 Hydrology
Covers evaluation of surface and ground water as an integrated resource using hydrologic principles. Topics include the hydrologic cycle (precipitation, interception and surface storage, infiltration, evapotranspiration, lakes and stream flow, and ground water discharge to oceans), hydrologic measurements and monitoring, surface water hydrology (rainfall/runoff modeling, hydrographs, hydrograph routing, and snow hydrology), and ground water hydrology (basic ground water hydraulics and porous media properties, aquifers, regional flow, and basin development and yield). Additional topics include hydrologic design, stochastic hydrology, and simulation modeling. Prereq. Knowledge of differential equations and introduction to probability and statistics; engineering students only.

CIVE 7261 Surface Water Hydraulics and Quality Modeling
Examines mechanisms through which environmental water quality becomes degraded, control strategies for mitigating degradation, and resource management strategies for preventing degradation. Topics include contaminant sources, eutrophication processes, environmental transport and transformation processes, water quality measurements and monitoring, contaminant fate and transport modeling in lakes, rivers, estuaries, and ground water, water quality control methods and strategies, and water resource protection regulations and strategies. Prereq. CIVE 7250 and CIVE 7260.

CIVE 7262 Watershed Management
Focuses on methods of water resources and water quality planning and management. Topics include the Clean Water Act and EU Water Framework; water body integration; linkage of watershed stresses (pollution, development, and stream modification) to ecological endpoints; optimization of water resource development and environmental protection, recognizing stresses and constraints imposed on the development; total maximum daily load process; attainability of standards and environmental goals; economic and equity issues; and watershed restoration.

CIVE 7263 Groundwater Hydraulics and Quality Modeling
Examines methods and models used to evaluate flow and contaminant transport in ground water, focusing on practical applications. Topics in ground water flow include one-dimensional flow, well hydraulics, aquifer parameter tests, unsaturated zone flow, seepage from canals and ditches, seepage through earth structures, and an introduction to aquifer modeling. Topics in ground water quality include chemical transport and transformation processes, chemical fate and transport modeling in ground water, and ground water quality measurement and monitoring. Studies solution methods that focus on analytical solutions and flow nets, with an introduction to numerical methods. Also discusses ground water quality control and resource protection methods, strategies, and regulations. Prereq. CIVE 7260; engineering students only.


CIVE 7272 Air Quality Management
Explores engineering theory and practice related to air resources management. Focuses on modeling dispersion and reactions for atmospheric pollutants and on analysis of systems for controlling gaseous and particulate emissions including dry collection, wet collection, absorption, and catalytic processes. Also addresses biological and chemical aspects of air pollution including toxicological issues, physiological effects of aerosols, analysis of organic and inorganic constituents of the atmosphere, and rationale for establishing air quality criteria and standards.

CIVE 7301 Advanced Soil Mechanics
Studies characterization of soils, soil mineralogy and chemistry, stresses within a soil mass, basic porous media flow principles, effective stress principle, compaction, drained and undrained stress-strain-strength concepts, and consolidation theory and its application. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7302 Advanced Foundation Engineering
Focuses on bearing-capacity and settlement analysis of conventional shallow foundations and combined footings; mat design; lateral earth pressure theory and application to retaining wall design, braced excavations, sheet pile wall design, and slurry trench walls; bearing-capacity design and analysis for deep foundations; and laterally loaded piles, friction piles, and pile-driven analysis.

CIVE 7303 Geotechnical Instrumentation (2SH)
Comprises field applications including drilling and sampling methods, subsurface exploration tools, in situ measurements for construction monitoring, and geophysical methods. Laboratory applications include measurement devices, data acquisition and processing, and laboratory devices for evaluating shear strength, consolidation properties, hydraulic conductivity, and geochemical measurements.

CIVE 7311 Soil and Foundation Dynamics
Considers dynamic loads, blast vibrations and monitoring, dynamic response of single-mass, multi degree-of-freedom systems, design of machine foundations, dynamic soil properties, ground response analysis, liquefaction, and seismic analysis of slopes and dams.
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CIVE 7312 Earthquake Engineering
Studies plate tectonics, seismology, faults and characteristics, ground motions, seismic hazard analysis, dynamic response of single degree-of-freedom system, response spectrum, site effects, and seismic design considerations for buildings, bridges, and earth-retaining structures. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7322 Engineering Geology
Focuses on selected topics in historical and structural geology related to engineering geology; origin and occurrence of various rock types, geologic structures, faulting, and joint systems; weathering of rock and weathering products, glaciation, geologic mapping, and environmental aspects; and case studies.

CIVE 7330 Advanced Structural Analysis
Explores modern methods of structural analysis, matrix formulation of flexibility and stiffness methods, and analysis of structures with material and geometric nonlinearities. Also introduces energy methods.

CIVE 7331 Structural Dynamics
Examines single and multi degree-of-freedom systems subjected to arbitrary dynamic loads. Topics include convolution and frequency domain solutions, introduction to analytical dynamics, damping models, modal analysis of classically damped systems, and state-space formulation.

CIVE 7340 Seismic Analysis and Design
Considers the response of linear systems to coherent and incoherent support motion, nonlinear response, the concept of ductility, inelastic response spectra, soil-structure interaction, random vibration theory, development of seismic codes, and characterizations of earthquakes for design.

CIVE 7341 Structural Reliability
Examines applications of probability theory and random variables for determining the reliability of structures. Includes the following topics: formulation of reliability for structural components and systems; first-order second-moment method, first- and second-order reliability methods, and simulation methods; analysis of model uncertainty and Bayesian parameter estimation technique; load and resistance models and bases for probabilistic structural codes; and time-dependent reliability methods. Assumes no prior knowledge of probability theory.

CIVE 7342 System Identification
Studies methods for identifying the fundamental characteristics of structures. Includes topics in linear algebra (singular value and QR decomposition, pseudoinversion, and so on); input-output relationships for linear time-invariant systems; frequency response functions; signal processing fundamentals; realization theory; the eigensystem realization algorithm; use of observers in identification; and introduction to out-only system identification.

CIVE 7350 Behavior of Concrete Structures
Considers flexural mechanics of reinforced concrete cross sections and members; combined bending, axial, and shear loads; advanced topics in shear, torsion, and connection design; and application of plastic analysis to reinforced concrete frames, their behavior under cyclic loading, and response of structures under seismic actions.

CIVE 7351 Behavior of Steel Structures
Studies the behavior of steel structures and its relation to design. Includes flexural mechanics of steel cross sections and members; instability; combined bending, axial, and shear loads; torsion of open and closed thin-walled sections; advanced topics in shear and connection design; and plate girders.

CIVE 7352 Bridge Design (2SH)
Covers design and analysis of bridge structures, construction methods, and load conditions. Considers special problems in analysis such as box girders, curved and skewed bridges, and environmental and seismic loads. Also explores bearings and expansion joints. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7353 Prestressed Concrete (2SH)
Studies the behavior and design of statically determinate prestressed concrete structures under bending moment, shear, torsion, and axial load effects. Covers the design of statically indeterminate prestressed concrete beams, frames, slabs, and shells. Considers time-dependent effects and deflections of prestressed concrete structures. Offers applications to the design and construction of bridges and buildings. Prereq. Engineering students only.

CIVE 7354 Wind Engineering
Covers atmospheric circulation, atmospheric boundary layer winds, bluff-body aerodynamics, introduction to random vibration theory, response of structures to fluctuating wind loads, aeroelastic phenomena, wind-tunnel and full-scale testing, nonsynoptic winds (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), wind-load standards, and design applications.

CIVE 7380 Transportation Performance Models
Examines methods and models used to predict transportation system performance and network equilibrium. Uses performance models to cover congestion on freeways and at intersections and the basis of traffic simulation. Discusses equilibrium analysis and network analysis for network assignment. Includes an introduction to supporting nonlinear optimization methods. Prereq. CIVE 5373 and IE 7280.

CIVE 7381 Transportation Demand Models
Examines methods and models used to predict urban travel demand. Introduces supporting statistical methods including linear regression, maximum likelihood estimation, and statistical tests. Also studies the effect of variable demand on project evaluation. Prereq. CIVE 5373 and knowledge of multivariate calculus; engineering students only.

CIVE 7385 Public Transportation
Studies the analysis, planning, and operational design of urban public transportation systems. Topics include service design and scheduling, such as route and system-level design and optimization, passenger flow modeling, rail operations, and bus operational control including automatic vehicle location and priority at signalized intersections. Also covers passenger sampling, ridership estimation, demand forecasting, data collection design, and service quality monitoring, with an emphasis on intelligent systems. Discusses policy issues including pricing, subsidy, and priority. Introduces supporting mathematical methods in optimization and statistical sampling. Prereq. Knowledge of probability theory.

CIVE 7388 Special Topics in Civil Engineering (2 or 4 SH)
Offered when the need for a special topic is evident to faculty and students. The course is initiated by the appropriate faculty members and discipline committee and approved by the department.

CIVE 7390 Special Topics in Construction Management Engineering (2 or 4 SH)
Offered when the need for a special topic is evident to faculty and students. The course is initiated by the appropriate faculty members and discipline committee and approved by the department.

CIVE 7392 Special Topics in Environmental Engineering (2 or 4 SH)
Offered when the need for a special topic is evident to faculty and students. The course is initiated by the appropriate faculty members and discipline committee and approved by the department.

CIVE 7394 Special Topics in Geotechnical Engineering (2 or 4 SH)
Offered when the need for a special topic is evident to faculty and students. The course is initiated by the appropriate faculty members and discipline committee and approved by the department.

CIVE 7396 Special Topics in Structural Engineering (2 or 4 SH)
Offered when the need for a special topic is evident to faculty and students. The course is initiated by the appropriate faculty members and discipline committee and approved by the department.

CIVE 7398 Special Topics in Transportation Engineering (2 or 4 SH)
Offered when the need for a special topic is evident to faculty and students. The course is initiated by the appropriate faculty members and discipline committee and approved by the department.

CIVE 7978 Independent Study (1-4 SH)
Offers an individual effort in an area selected by student and adviser and approved by the Department Discipline Committee resulting in a definitive report. Prereq. Permission of instructor; engineering students only.

CIVE 7990 Thesis (1-4 SH)
Offers analytical and/or experimental research conducted by arrangement with and under the supervision of the department. Prereq. Engineering students only.


CIVE 7996 Thesis Continuation (0SH)
Offers continued thesis work conducted under the supervision of a departmental faculty. Prereq. CIVE 7990; engineering students only.

CIVE 8674 Master's Report (2 or 4 SH)
Offers an individual effort consisting of laboratory and/or literature investigation and analysis of advanced design of a project in an area of civil engineering selected by student and adviser resulting in a definitive report. Requires a completed report seven years from the start of the master’s program. Prereq. Permission of department; engineering students only.

CIVE 9990 Dissertation (0 SH)
Offers analytical and/or experimental research conducted by arrangement with and under the supervision of the department. Open to full-time students only. Prerequisite: Admission to doctoral program in CIV.

CIVE 9996 Dissertation Continuation (0 SH)
Offers continued thesis work conducted under the supervision of a departmental faculty. Prereq. CIVE 9990; engineering students only.

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