Experiment Design for Civil Engineering

Prof. Francis J. Hopcroft recently retired from teaching civil and environmental engineering after 23 years in the classroom and about 40 years of consulting in the field. He is the author of five environmental engineering and hazardous waste management books, the coauthor of 23 such books, and a contributor to a dozen or more professional manuals of practice. A graduate of Northeastern University and the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, he has been registered as a Professional Engineer in all six New England states and as a Licensed Site Professional in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Before starting his teaching career, he spent 25 years in professional practice as a consultant, an EPA regulator, and as the President and CEO of several consulting firms doing site assessment for the presence and remediation of oil and hazardous material releases. He continued his consulting work while teaching to maintain currency in his field and to bring current concepts into the classroom. Dr. Abigail Charest is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) in Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently the Blittersdorf Endowed Professor and utilizes that professorship to address topics of sustainability in the curriculum. She is an avid researcher, experimenter, and innovator in the laboratory. She has also served as the lead faculty member in the redevelopment of a graduate program in civil engineering at Wentworth and incorporated significant research and experimentation opportunities into that program. She received her doctorate from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and prior to entering into academia, she worked in the field of environmental consulting in the New England Area. During this time, she received her Professional Engineering license in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

1. Introduction. 2. How to Design an Engineering Experiment. 3. Sampling Source Media. 4. Expected Outcomes and Interpretation of Data. 5. Model Design Methodology. 6. Laboratory Report. 7. Effective Presentation of the Data to Others. 8. Designing Research Experiment Projects. 9. Material and Structural Analysis Experiments. 10. Concrete Testing Experiments. 11. Soil Testing Experiments. 12. Environmental Assessment Experiments. 13. Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulics Experiments.