Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental): Year 4 Outline

 

• No candidate shall pass the BE Degree Examination (Environmental Engineering) who fails to satisfy the Examiners in the Year's Work in Environmental Engineering; no candidate shall be awarded honours whose Engineering Report or Project fails to satisfy the Examiners.

All candidates for a degree in Civil Engineering must submit a report containing the results of experiments carried out by the candidate or the results of analysis or a critical survey of the literature on some prescribed topic.  Effective stress. Seepage and drainage. Shear strength: failure criteria; pore pressure coefficients; critical state theory. Consolidation and compression: coefficient of consolidation, preconsolidation pressure; pore pressure dissipation; vertical drains. Stresses and displacements. Laboratory tests. Unsaturated soil mechanics. Lateral earth pressure. Bearing capacity: shallow and deep foundations. Stability of slopes. Embankment construction and monitoring. Geotextiles. Site investigation.  Management and organizational behaviour. Engineering economic principles. Economic comparisons and risk. Productivity. Networks, planning, scheduling and resource allocation. Computer based network analysis. Project control and cost control. Classification and distribution of costs. Statistics, decision theory and simulation. Quality.  Design of earth retaining walls. Suspended floors: constructional options. Two-way action in slabs. Loads on supporting beams. Design of continuous beams and slender columns. Analysis and design of multi-storey reinforced concrete framed buildings. Resistance to horizontal loading. Foundations, including pile caps. Robustness. Buildability. Reinforcement detailing. Computer-aided analysis and drafting. Illustrated case histories.
Air pollutant characteristics and standards. Origin, fate and effects of air pollutants. Indoor air pollution, acid rain, dust, odours, ozone depletion and greenhouse effect. Air pollution meteorology. Atmospheric dispersion. Control of stationary and mobile sources of air pollution. Properties of sound waves and noise pollution. Sources of noise and its effects on people. Noise rating systems and its control. 

• (a) Design Office: Preparations of calculations and working drawings for designs in concrete. Solution of problems by computer. Design Office work is closely related to the Design of Concrete course.
• (b) Soil Mechanics Laboratory: Properties of soils; strength and consolidation tests on soils; flow nets; model retaining walls and foundations. Sampling procedures in the field.
• (c) Environmental Engineering Design: Candidates must submit working drawings and calculations for designs of environmental engineering treatment facilities.
• (d) Environmental Engineering Laboratory: Students carry out a number of laboratory tests to establish water, wastewater and waste parameters.
• (e) Communications: Written and oral presentations, and simulated inquiries and court cases on environmental projects.
• (f) Pep Reports

Water wave mechanics including the structure of ocean and coastal waves. Waves as a group and wave energy. Refraction and diffraction of waves, breaking waves. Waves as a random process. Ports and marinas. Marine outfalls. Beach processes. Sediment protection. Coastal protection. Tidal dynamics.  Design of complete water treatment systems for municipal and industrial supplies. Design of small and large-scale complete treatment systems for municipal, industrial and agricultural wastewaters including solids treatment. Use of proprietary computer programs. Municipal, agricultural, industrial, construction and hazardous wastes. Waste collection. Waste treatment including re-use, recycling, drying, composing, incineration and engineered landfills. Waste minimisation. Environmental auditing and management systems. Soil contamination and remediation. Waste directives and regulations. Section A - Sustainable Energy This section of the subject is an introduction to sustainable energy. The course examines various different sustainable energy resources, including wind, solar, hydropower and geothermal from the point of view of quantification of the available resource, the energy conversion technologies used to harness them and the environmental impacts resulting from their use. The course also introduces students to the concepts of embodied energy and life cycle assessment and the application of these important concepts to sustainable engineering.
Section B - Energy in Buildings This section is an introduction to energy systems in buildings. The course describes the inter-relationships between building physics, human occupant behaviour and energy systems required in the provision and maintenance of thermal, visual and acoustic comfort. Optimum states of comfort are defined including the necessary physical measurement infrastructure. Systematic procedures for the analysis of thermal comfort metrics and design principles of sustainable and smart buildings including conventional and renewable energy systems are presented.
This module gives an introduction to architectural design, planning and management. This includes processes undertaken by practicing architects from concept to detail. Examples will be given to show how through creative thinking science and art can be merged to form innovative and novel solutions. Pipe Flow Topics including analysis and design of pipe distribution systems, hydropower development, urban stormwater drainage design. Open Channel Flow Topics including hydraulic modelling and hydrometry. Special consideration of topics in river water quality modelling and river sediment transport modelling. Hydrological and energy cycles, properties of water, evolution of water quality in the natural environment. Measurement of precipitation, evaporation and streamflow. Calculation of mean areal rainfall, mean daily flow and flow duration curves. Hydrological frequency analysis - floods and low flows. Water vapour, humidity and evaporation. Water balance and water resources. Linear reservoir and unit hydrograph. Groundwater and groundwater protection. Introduction to some proprietary computer models. Assessment: Assignments 25%. End of semester two hour written examination 75%.  Working at heights, excavations, mobile equipment, lifting operations, demolition, maintenance, confined spaces, scaffolding, plant, buried services, construction regulations, construction hazards, hand tools and vibration, safety culture, quarrying.  This module is a practically focused and oriented course designed to give students both the practical and theoretical skills used in site investigations. Site investigation concepts, guidelines and regulations are covered along with standard field and lab tests (rock strength, T & P tests, drilling methods, etc.) with Irish examples used for illustration. An introduction to and overview on the use of geophysics in site assessment is given. Assessment is by theory exam at the end of the first semester (70%), and completion and submission of practical work during the semester (30%). At the end of the course students should have an understanding of: Investigation and analysis of geological materials. Problems/hazards associated with use of geological materials. The importance of groundwater in geological/engineering investigations. Use of geological and geotechnical data in decision making Geophysical techniques for applied and engineering geology.There are no text books for the course, but reading materials will be recommended and reports, legislative and guidance documents will be made available through Blackboard.  Awaiting description. Nature and role of management. Process of management: planning, decision-making, organising, leading, controlling. Strategic management and the strategy process. Technology management and the innovation process. Principles of financial accounting and the analysis and interpretation of financial data. Functional and legalcharacteristics of business organisations. The role of cost behaviour and analysis in the decision making process. Planning, control and performance measurement as a function of effective management. Introduction to organisational finance and financial concepts. The human factor in organisations, the nature of the employment relationship, context and development of Irish industrial relations, the role of the state, the role of employers, the role of trade unions, the nature of conflict, conflict resolution, collective bargaining, protective legislation. Calculus of variations with application to continuum mechanics, etc. Methods of approximation to solution of boundary value problems. Solutions of boundary value problems; use of Fourier Integral, conformal 1 mapping. Rigorous treatment of series and solutions. Continuum mechanics. Mechanics of Solids. Elasticity. Saint-Venant problems of a right cylinder. Two dimensional elasticity. Ordinary non-linear differential equations; notions of stability; Liapunoff’s methods.