Research activities in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering at Qatar University are rich and diverse. They cover all of the Civil Engineering specialties. The main streams of such activities are summarized below.
Structural Engineering:
Structural vibrations serviceability; structural damage and identification; structural health monitoring and human-induced vibration; railway dynamics; use of carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforcements in cementitious materials; bearing resistance cellular concrete; and self-compacting concrete reinforced with basalt fibers.
Transportation Engineering:
Recycling of discarded materials (e.g., excavation and demolition waste, steel slag, cement kiln dust, milled asphalt pavement aggregate) and soil stabilization for road construction; pavement maintenance and rehabilitation; asphalt aging; accelerated pavement testing and superpave technology; development of design and directional design of hourly volumes traffic forecast models; estimating turning movements from transportation planning parameters; quantifying the impacts of transportation projects on sustainable development in Qatar; and evaluation of transit signal priority implementation along major arterial in Doha.
Geotechnical Engineering:
Studying the shear strength-deformation characteristics of fine-grained soils and soil-solid interfaces at low to intermediate effective normal stress ranges using element, macro and full-scale laboratory testing and utilizing the research results in the design and construction of onshore and offshore oil and gas facilities; stability analysis of soil slopes, design of MSW landfill liner and cover systems; stability assessment of earth reinforcement, and design of anchor rods; and investigating the elastic settlement behavior of piled foundations resting on extended nonhomogeneous rock masses.
Water Resources and Environmental Engineering:
Flow through porous media; pore-scale modeling; non-destructive imaging of pore-scale phenomena and environmental fluid dynamics; water and wastewater treatment (membrane fouling, forward osmosis, biosorption and selective adsorption); and water and sewer networks optimization.
Construction Management:
Safety management; project success factors; construction changes; as well as various other construction management related topics.
Research Clusters Interests & Highlight of Recent Research Activities:
Structural Engineering and Structural Materials
Research Interests
- Concrete material characterization and behavior
- Self-Healing Reinforced Concrete Structures
- Rehabilitation of reinforced concrete structures
- Sustainable concrete structures
- Numerical modelling and large scale testing
Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering
Research Interests
- Vibrations Serviceability of Structures
- Metastructures for Passive Vibration Control
- Smart Structures and Active Vibration Control
- Structural Damage Detection
Geotechnical Engineering
Research Interests
- Shear Strength measurement and behavior of geo-materials
- Stability of Slopes
- Bearing Capacity and settlement of shallow and deep foundations
- Soil structure interaction
Construction Engineering and Management
Research Interests
- Construction productivity measurement and improvement
- Jobsite Instrumentation for progress monitoring
- Construction Safety
- ICT for Worker Health and Safety
- Data Collection and Analysis
Pavement and Materials
Research Interests
- Materials Recycling
- Asphalt Binders and Mixtures
- Pavement Design, Maintenance and Rehabilitation
- Quieter Pavements
- Superpave Technology
- Pavement Management
Transportation Engineering
Research Interests
- Traffic Operations & Transportation Planning
- Traffic Simulation & Modeling
- Public Transportation
- Traffic Safety
- Railway Engineering
Environmental and Water Resources
Research Interests
- Groundwater pollution, protection and modeling
- Multiphase flow and dynamics of gases through porous media
- Simulation of micro-processes in porous media
- Water and Wastewater Treatment: Membrane bio-reactors (MBRs), Forward Osmosis (FO), Reverse Osmosis (RO), Electrocoagulation.
- Non-destructive technologies for leak prediction in water and sewer networks