Design Studios in Civil Engineering Education

While the education of civil engineers is presently considered to be at the expected level, the engineering profession consistently points to the lack of integration of technical content in problem solving activities, and the inadequate communication and team-working skills of many graduates. Very often we all come across the students who know the content but cant seem to apply it and the question that comes to mind is how to re-energise the learning experience for both ourselves and our students? Literature consistently points out that any form of group activity will result in a better quality of student learning when compared to traditional delivery methods (Fink, 2003). Students often point to the obvious inconsequence of much of the course material learned in early years to real engineering problems. Once real design projects are encountered in later years, much of this knowledge has been lost; the application is not obvious or it is considered too theoretical for practical applications. The motivation of students to learn and integrate scientific and technological concepts from early on in their academic career is one of the key objectives for the creation of Civil Engineering Design Studios at a number of universities worldwide, as uncovered by the first author during her recent visit to several Universitas 21 (U21) member institutions as a U21 Fellow. This paper presents some of the findings concerning the Design Studios in Civil Engineering education, as revealed during the Fellowship

New Civil Engineering with Architecture Program @ UNSW

The present paper describes the newly introduced BE Civil with Architecture degree in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UNSW, the process that lead to the establishment of the Program, and its benefits to the education of future Civil Engineers. This is an innovative multi-disciplinary single undergraduate degree with a major in Civil Engineering and a minor in Architecture completed within four years. The core of the Civil Engineering Program is maintained and supplemented with almost a full year of courses from the Faculty of the Built Environment which are taught in a multidisciplinary environment. The aims of this Program are to provide an appreciation of architectural principles, an understanding of both the architect's role in construction, the interaction between architects and engineers, and the importance of ethics, sustainability and the creation of unique innovative design. The ultimate objective is to help students become conceptual thinkers, inspired by beautiful creations to build even better ones, to develop an appreciation for beauty with the mathematical ability to challenge the traditional boundaries of engineering design. It is envisaged that the students graduating from this BE degree will be well qualified to collaborate with architects and other professionals in the built environment to produce integrated, sustainable design

Project X: A Multi Disciplinary Design Workshop

This paper describes the development and implementation of two multi disciplinary design courses at UNSW, dubbed Project X and Project X2. The courses were originally proposed by the Organising Committee of the ConnectED 2007 Conference, as demonstration courses that might embody the spirit of the Conference. They have been coordinated by representatives from the three design-based faculties at UNSW: Faculty of the Built Environment (FBE), College of Fine Arts (COFA) and Faculty of Engineering (FOE). These faculties are also the host faculties for the Conference. Project X (the Scheme Design Course), ran as an intensive course for three weeks in February 2007. Students from the three Faculties worked together in teams to produce scheme designs against a brief set by the Conference Organising Committee as client for the design. The scheme designs were evaluated first within the course and then by an external Project X Jury. The Jury selected the winning design which was then to be developed and constructed by multidisciplinary teams in Project X2 (the Fabrication and Construction Course). This course is currently running in a standard once-a-week mode in Session 1, 2007. Together, Project X and Project X2 celebrate both the design process and the design education process, and both in their multi-disciplinary dimension. The Project X cross-disciplinary mix, with Faculty of Engineering students working alongside students from the College of Fine Arts, and Faculty of the Built Environment students, is so rich it has been described as cross-cultural. Whether despite or because of this richness, evidence so far from surveys of students and staff indicates a successful outcome in terms of design education experience

Evaluation of dynamic stress intensity factors and T-stress using the scaled boundary finite-element method

A technique to evaluate the dynamic stress intensity factors and T-stress is developed by extending the scaled boundary finite-element method. Only the boundary of the problem domain is discretized. The inertial effect at high frequencies is modeled by a continued fraction solution of the dynamic stiffness matrix without introducing an internal mesh. Standard time-stepping scheme is applied to perform response history analyses directly in the time domain. The internal displacement field is obtained by numerical integration after removing the stress singularity. The dynamic stress intensity factors and the T-stress are evaluated directly based on their definitions. No asymptotic solution around the singular point is required. Numerical examples of cracks in homogeneous and bi-material plates demonstrate the simplicity and accuracy of this technique. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved