Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering & Industrial Systems and Technology
College of Science, Engineering, and Technology

Structural Engineering

All structures, regardless of their function, are subjected to forces caused by various phenomena including the natural environment (such as ocean wave, wind and earthquakes) and by man (such as cargo and automobile traffic), and they must be designed to withstand these forces. These structures can be as varied as buildings, bridges, pipelines, machinery, automobiles and spacecraft.

The structural engineer designs or evaluates and improves the load resistance capabilities of existing structures, which may have been damaged during the earthquake. In order to accomplish this, the structural engineer must be knowledgeable about the behavior of deformable bodies, about the sources, magnitudes and probability of occurrence of applied loads, about materials properties, design philosophies and governmental design codes, and about computer programming and usage.