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