Research Projects

Research projects conducted by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation(NSF); National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA); U.S. Corps of Engineers(USAE); U.S. Geological Survey(USGS); U.S. Air Force(USAF); state, regional and local agencies; and private industries.

Current faculty research projects and interests span a wide range of technical areas as described below:

Coastal Engineering

  • Documented evidence of the impact of seawalls on adjacent beaches
  • Economic alternatives to increase the fill life of renourished beaches
  • Current effects on wave transformation in shallow water
  • Computer-aided design of coastal structures
  • Physics of breaking water waves on beaches
  • Coastal waves and current numerical modeling systems

 

Environmental Engineering

  • Particle removal and ozone in water treatment
  • Coagulation and organics removal
  • Environmental monitoring
  • Transport and fate of contaminants in lakes and reservoirs
  • Chemical equilibrium modeling
  • Water quality modeling
  • Dewatering of water treatment residuals
  • Water and wastewater process evaluation studies
  • Organic matter and disinfection
  • By-product precursor characterization
  • Toxicity characterization of wastewater
  • Effluent and residuals disposal
  • Water quality assesment/management
  • Watershed-scale distributed parameter modeling of nonpoint source pollution
  • Particle and contaminant transport/fate modeling
  • Dewatering of dredged materials
  • Air pollution control
  • Hazardous waste management
  • Freeze drying of sludge
  • Surface and groundwater modeling
  • Water quality modeling and simulation
  • GIS-based uni-directional flushing modeling
  • DNAPL site characterization adn remediation of superfund site
  • GIS-based spatial/temporal environmental modeling & simulation
  • GIS-based uni-directional flushing modeling
  • Engineering geographic information systems(GIS) application development

 

Geotechnical and Earthquake Engineering

  • Granular mechanics
  • Soil dynamics
  • Soil liquefaction during earthquakes
  • Soil-structure interaction

 

Structural Engineering

  • Base isolation and energy absorptions for bridges
  • Fatigue fracture
  • Fiber reinforced concrete
  • Finite element analysis
  • Nonlinear optimization
  • Parallel computing techniques in nonlinear structural mechanics
  • Parallel-vector algorithms for computational structural mechanics
  • Passive damping of space structures
  • Polymer-fiber composite materials
  • Stability and behavior of steel structures
  • Structural optimization
  • Sub-base stabilization with solid waste fly ash

 

Water Resources Engineering

  • Channelized overland flow
  • Computational hydraulics
  • Engineering geographic information systems(GIS) application development
  • Flood frequency analysis and flood routing
  • GIS in large-scale modeling and simulation
  • GIS in water resources engineering
  • GIS-based spatial/temporal environmental modeling & simulation
  • Stochastic/statistical hydrology
  • Stormwater runoff from marine drydocks
  • Surface and groundwater modeling
  • Transport and fate of contaminants in lakes and reservoirs
  • Urban storm-drainage systems
  • Urban stormwater management
  • Water quality modeling

 

Transportation Engineering

  • Hampton Road Evacuation Study
  • Primary and secondary Incident Management
  • Case-based Reasoning
  • Economic Impact of Traffic Incidents on NC Interstate Facilities
  • Innovative Large Truck Speed Enforcement