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Electives

Civil Engineering

Every elective Zooky offers for this major.

Year 4 · Semester 1 · choose 1 of 6

  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Bridge Engineering

    How bridges carry traffic: forms, loads, load sharing, prestressed and composite girders, bearings, cables and assessment.

    Prerequisites: Solid Mechanics, Structural Analysis, Reinforced Concrete Design

    What you'll learn (11 topics)
    • Bridge forms and load paths
    • Bridge loads and combinations
    • Moving loads and load envelopes
    • Load distribution between girders
    • Prestressed concrete girders
    • Composite steel and concrete girders
    • Bearings, movements and expansion joints
    • Cable-supported bridges: cables, stays and towers
    • Bridge assessment: rating, deterioration and fatigue
    • Continuous spans
    • Abutments and piers
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Advanced and Prestressed Concrete

    How prestress lets concrete span farther: stresses, losses, deflection, strength, shear, composite beams, anchorage zones, continuous beams and slabs.

    Prerequisites: Reinforced Concrete Design, Solid Mechanics, Structural Steel Design

    What you'll learn (11 topics)
    • Prestress principles and service stresses
    • Immediate losses: elastic shortening, friction and slip
    • Time-dependent losses and the effective prestress
    • Load balancing, cracking and deflection
    • Flexural strength by strain compatibility
    • Shear in prestressed beams
    • Designing a beam and composite action
    • Strut-and-tie models and anchorage zones
    • Continuous members and prestressed slabs
    • Precast prestressed elements
    • Durability, assessment and rehabilitation
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Flood, Catchment and Urban Water

    Flood estimation and urban water beyond the core: curve-number runoff, synthetic unit hydrographs, catchment models, flood frequency, compound channels, routing, flood damage, street drainage and sewer hydraulics.

    Prerequisites: Fluid Mechanics, Hydraulics and Hydrology, Environmental Engineering and Water Quality

    What you'll learn (14 topics)
    • Curve-number runoff
    • Synthetic unit hydrographs
    • Conceptual catchment models
    • Flood frequency with weighted skew
    • Compound channels and floodplains
    • Flood routing with Muskingum–Cunge
    • Flood damage and benefit–cost
    • Street drainage and inlets
    • Sewer hydraulics and the hydraulic grade line
    • Stormwater quality and pollutant loads
    • Treatment trains and water-sensitive design
    • Two-dimensional flood modelling
    • Joint probability and compound flooding
    • River sediment transport
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Transport Planning and Traffic Modelling

    Transport demand and traffic models beyond the core: trip generation, doubly constrained gravity, nested logit mode choice, equilibrium assignment, cell transmission queues, car-following simulation and validation, pricing and accessibility.

    Prerequisites: Transport Systems and Traffic Engineering

    What you'll learn (24 topics)
    • Transport modes and system planning
    • Travel demand forecasting and network assignment
    • Transport networks
    • Planning and approvals
    • Trip generation and balancing
    • Regression and correlation: fit, inference and prediction
    • Doubly constrained gravity and calibration
    • Iterative methods: Jacobi and Gauss–Seidel
    • Nested logit mode choice
    • Public transport frequency, capacity and reliability
    • Equilibrium assignment
    • Capacity and level of service
    • Cell transmission and spatial queues
    • Speed, flow and density models
    • Deterministic traffic queues and bottleneck delay
    • Car following and validation
    • Simulation workflow: solvers, step size, verification and validation
    • Simulation and the limits of models
    • Pricing, elasticity and demand response
    • Transport economics and project appraisal
    • Time value of money
    • Accessibility measures
    • Walking, cycling and inclusive transport service
    • Site plans and GIS basics
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Construction Management, Contracts and BIM

    Construction management beyond the core: contract risk allocation, programmes with lags and float, delay and extension of time, prolongation and disruption, contractor cash flow and accounts, and BIM coordination, 4D progress and 5D quantities.

    Prerequisites: Civil Engineering Practice

    What you'll learn (21 topics)
    • Contracts and procurement
    • Estimating and PERT
    • Site risk, quality and environmental management
    • Planning and approvals
    • Contract risk allocation
    • Risk and decisions
    • Precedence networks, lags and float
    • Teamwork and project management
    • Delay, extension of time and concurrency
    • Prolongation and disruption cost
    • Earned value management
    • Contractor cash flow and finance
    • Time value of money
    • Contractor accounts and revenue recognition
    • BIM coordination and clash detection
    • Building systems and structural forms
    • Site plans and GIS basics
    • BIM and the programme: 4D progress
    • BIM and cost: 5D quantities
    • Quantities, take-off and rates
    • Formwork and temporary works
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Humanitarian and Development Engineering

    Engineering for people in need: planning figures for water and toilets, water points and trucking, chlorination, pit sizing, service levels and survey coverage, and life-cycle cost per user.

    Prerequisites: Environmental Engineering and Water Quality

    What you'll learn (18 topics)
    • Human-centred design
    • Ethics and professional practice
    • Sustainability and life-cycle thinking
    • Planning figures for an emergency site
    • Simple civil sizing calculations
    • Water points, queues and trucking
    • Water, wastewater and drainage systems
    • Supply storage schedules, reserve, energy and pressure history
    • Chlorination and household water treatment
    • Water-treatment barriers and preliminary sizing
    • Filter run limits, effective segmented CT and UV operating-volume evidence
    • Excreta: pit sizing and filling
    • Infrastructure systems
    • Service levels and coverage
    • The engineering design process
    • Life-cycle cost per user
    • Time value of money
    • Whole-life carbon

Year 4 · Semester 2 · choose 1 of 6

  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

    How buildings and bridges move: periods, modes, earthquake spectra, ductility, isolation and wind.

    Prerequisites: Solid Mechanics, Structural Analysis, Structural Steel Design

    What you'll learn (9 topics)
    • One degree of freedom: structures as mass, spring and damper
    • Generalised single degree of freedom
    • Pulse loads, shock spectra and step-by-step integration
    • Multi-storey buildings and modal analysis
    • Earthquake ground motion and response spectra
    • Seismic design forces and drift
    • Ductility and inelastic response
    • Base isolation and damping devices
    • Wind loading and wind-induced vibration
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Timber and Composite Structures

    Designing in timber and in steel with concrete: the material, beams, columns and joints, fire, composite beams, slabs and columns, and partial interaction.

    Prerequisites: Structural Steel Design, Solid Mechanics, Reinforced Concrete Design

    What you'll learn (15 topics)
    • Timber as a structural material
    • The design basis for timber
    • Timber beams: bending, shear and bearing
    • Timber deflection, creep and floor vibration
    • Timber tension, compression and combined actions
    • Timber connections with nails, screws and bolts
    • Timber durability and fire
    • Composite action: the transformed section
    • Shear connection: studs and the degree of connection
    • Composite beam strength: plastic moment and partial connection
    • Composite beam serviceability: creep, shrinkage and cracking
    • Composite slabs with profiled sheeting
    • Composite columns: squash load and slenderness
    • Partial interaction: the gamma method, CLT and timber–concrete floors
    • Strengthening and rehabilitation of existing members
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Advanced Structural Analysis and FEA

    Beyond the first stiffness analysis: settlement and thermal loads, rigid floors, plates and locking, buckling, second-order sway, plastic collapse and whole-building models.

    Prerequisites: Structural Analysis, Structural Steel Design, Solid Mechanics

    What you'll learn (8 topics)
    • Loads, releases and support movements
    • Constraints, rigid floors and penalty ties
    • Plate bending and shear locking
    • Geometric stiffness and buckling
    • Second-order analysis of sway frames
    • Plastic collapse of beams and frames
    • Elastic-plastic behaviour and hinge sequence
    • Whole-structure models: walls, frames, soil and floors
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Advanced Geotechnical Engineering

    Soil behaviour beyond the basics: stress paths, critical state, in-situ tests, liquefaction, pile tests and lateral loading, anchored and reinforced walls, slope stabilisation, rock slopes and support, problem soils, ground improvement and dewatering, and tunnelling ground movement.

    Prerequisites: Soil Mechanics, Geotechnical Engineering, Engineering Geology and Earth Systems

    What you'll learn (22 topics)
    • Stress paths in the triaxial test
    • Critical state and Modified Cam Clay
    • In-situ testing and geophysics
    • Cyclic loading and liquefaction
    • Unsaturated soils
    • Numerical consolidation by finite differences
    • Pile load tests and setup
    • Laterally loaded piles
    • Anchored walls and soil nails
    • Reinforced soil walls
    • Slope stabilisation and rapid drawdown
    • Intact rock strength and Mohr-Coulomb
    • Discontinuity shear strength
    • Discontinuities and stereographic projection
    • Rock slope plane failure
    • Wedge and toppling failure of rock slopes
    • Rock mass description, RQD and the Q-system
    • Rock bolts and reinforcement
    • Using rock mass classification in design
    • Problem soils: expansive and collapsible ground
    • Grouting, deep mixing and dewatering
    • Tunnelling ground movement
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Coastal, Ocean and Marine Engineering

    Waves, tides and storm surge, the beach and the sand that moves along it, and the structures that must stand in the sea.

    Prerequisites: Fluid Mechanics, Engineering Physics, Probability and Statistics for Engineers

    What you'll learn (17 topics)
    • Linear wave theory
    • Wave energy, groups and reflection
    • Shoaling, refraction and breaking
    • Short-term wave statistics
    • Design waves and return period
    • Wave generation and hindcasting
    • Tides
    • Storm surge and design water levels
    • Wave setup and nearshore currents
    • Sediment and the beach profile
    • Longshore transport and shoreline change
    • Beach nourishment and coastal protection
    • Wave loads on slender piles
    • Vertical-wall structures
    • Rubble-mound breakwaters
    • Estuary tidal prism and flushing
    • Wave and tidal power
  • Ready to learn · Level 4 · 6 points

    Environmental Sustainability and Planning

    Sustainable infrastructure from principles to carbon: planning demand and the year a plant is outgrown, impact assessment and law, air quality, waste and the circular economy, and the whole-life carbon of an asset.

    Prerequisites: Environmental Engineering and Water Quality

    What you'll learn (37 topics)
    • Sustainability frameworks: boundaries, goals and the triple bottom line
    • Water, energy and material cycles
    • Climate and carbon basics
    • Sustainability and life-cycle thinking
    • Population and demand planning
    • Infrastructure systems
    • Planning and approvals
    • Water, wastewater and drainage systems
    • Urban metabolism: stock carry-forward and metered energy boundaries
    • Time value of money
    • Impact assessment, alternatives and mitigation
    • EIA process, jurisdictional roles and operative decision evidence
    • Environmental legislation: duties, approvals, licences and fees
    • Hazard identification
    • Quantifying uncertainty
    • Environmental exposure, compatible dose-response and scoped risk screens
    • Environmental management systems and defensible audit evidence
    • Indigenous knowledge governance in participatory assessment research
    • Externalities, environmental valuation and social counterfactual accounts
    • Ethics and professional practice
    • Transport economics and project appraisal
    • Air sources, dispersion and control
    • Atmospheric evidence, reflected plumes and effective-height limits
    • Gas-control selection, reserve cloth and ideal collecting/reacting models
    • Indoor CO2 balances, zone outdoor air and occupancy-to-purge histories
    • Air pollutants, monitoring evidence and reporting bases
    • Waste hierarchy, recovery and landfill inventories
    • Waste bases, feasible collection service and material-product quality
    • Municipal landfill airspace, water/liner boundaries and dated gas cohorts
    • Compost feed recipes and conditional digestion/COD energy balances
    • Wet-waste thermal energy, net export and residue/heat-integration boundaries
    • Hazardous-waste evidence, paired properties and contaminant-transfer sinks
    • Waste policy authority, cash incentives and honest stock-aware metrics
    • Mass haul diagrams and earthmoving balance
    • Whole-life carbon
    • Life-cycle assessment and sustainable process accounting
    • Life-cycle cost and replacement economics