Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering - Structural Engineering and Mechanics

Colorado State University

Structural Engineering deals with the design and assessment of the built environment under service loads and extreme events, along with their maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation. Structural engineers design and analyze structures at the component and system level as well as the entire community scale, taking into account interactions between systems. Structural Mechanics is the study of material behavior under loads. Today’s structural engineer can choose from many materials, including timber, steel, masonry, concrete, and composites to provide economical and serviceable structures that are strong enough to resist gravity loads as well as dynamic forces from wind and earthquakes. Structural Mechanics focuses on the determination of stress and strain distributions in solids when materials are used in engineering structures of any kind. Computational solid mechanics makes up the bulk of research conducted in this area, specifically research associated with new methods for the analysis of nonlinear material behavior, adaptive materials, and structural mechanics. An emphasis in Structural Mechanics leads the student into courses which stress the theoretical foundations of solid mechanics. A strong program in computational mechanics is provided. The curriculum includes closely related courses in geoengineering, fluid mechanics, and mechanical engineering. Facilities utilized for structural mechanics include those described for structural engineering and for computational methods.

Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering