Course Description

Course specific training objectives

The second-cycle (master-level) Course in Civil Engineering is aimed at training a professional profile possessing a wide range of knowledge and competences related to the design, realization, management, survey, control and maintenance of constructions, of big works and infrastructures. The training path is structured in such a way as to allow learners to acquire an autonomous capacity of analyzing complex engineering problems and, consequently, access the labor world as well as that of research and development at a national and international level.

The training of the students is based on subjects that, on the one hand enhance the engineering expertise acquired with the Three-year Degree course in Civil and Environmental Engineering and, on the other hand, introduce elements that contribute to more completely design the expertise needed to carry on tasks entailing big responsibilities in the process of design and management of civil works also with reference to their interactions with the surrounding environment. The students have to tackle two kinds of subjects that can be referred to two main specializing thematic areas (the structural engineering area and the juridical-organizational area for constructions and architecture) to allow them dealing with a wide variety of highly-complex practical applications and engineering problems by expanding their theoretical knowledge. In this regard, the modules’ contents are closely related to the engineering practice as well as to innovations and results achieved in the research field.

The learning path is divided into two years. The first one integrates and enhances the training of the students in the field of civil engineering with particular reference to the design of structures and infrastructures also taking into account their interactions with the surrounding environment. In the second year this training is completed and the students have to tackle subjects that can be referred to two different sectors (constructions and design sector and structures and infrastructures sector) having also the possibility of further enriching their training with courses at choice to be selected among those offered by the Engineering Faculty in order to better characterize their training path. Activities that are complementary to traditional courses, such as internships and visits to companies, seminars and case studies discussions, are thoroughly analyzed in a wide range of training activities at partnering companies and in the preparation of a final paper, a veritable opportunity to sum up the study activities carried on; under the supervision of one or more teachers (also in the research centers from which many UNINETTUNO’s teachers come from), the students can develop an original and highly innovative work in one of the various fields that were presented during their study path.

The subjects, that are common to all learners, enhancing their training in the field of civil engineering deal with the constructions science, with particular reference to the solutions for bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional structures, to the structures’ dynamics, to the instability of elastic balance and to the theory of plasticity. In this field, problems related to the design of reinforced and pre-stressed concrete, based on the latest developments of national and international regulations, will be treated. The subjects, common to all students, that supply useful elements for advanced design of structures and infrastructures cover a wide range of design issues. Actually, issues linked to civil and environmental hydraulics are developed as the design of aqueducts and sewage systems, the modeling of natural streams, the study of surface waters, of ground waters and solids’ carriage as well as the design and realization of hydraulic works to protect the land and the acquisition of knowledge related to the main infra-structuring systems are developed from a theoretical and applicative perspective. In addition, a common module will refer to the field of infrastructures and transport systems engineering in which problems linked to the techniques and economy of transports, of the structural and functional behavior of superstructures such as roads, railways and airports, transports planning, operational design of road infrastructures, traffic techniques, controls and road safety will be analyzed. To complete the picture of common modules there will be, from one hand a component of the sector of technical architecture and building production (in which issues related to the knowledge of the building bodies and of its main constitutive and typological characters will be analyzed also deepening aspects related to the capacities and quality of building production studying the relation between product and construction), on the other hand, a lot of attention will be devoted to more general problems linked to numerical methods for engineering (special functions and orthogonal polynomials, approximation of data and functions, problems of initial values for ordinary differential equations and resolution of non-linear equations) and to more technical problems of organization and management (project management, logistics, quality and marketing).

The specializing modules proposed for the two thematic fields (construction and design and structures and infrastructure fields) contribute to define specific curricula, highly requested in the world of professions and public and private employment, linked to the particular competences that, along the years, have been developed in applied research. In the construction and design field, issues related to tridimensional modeling and interoperable management of constructions, to building renewal and adjustment to environmental/structural requirements are treated. To conclude the composition as it regards the building and design field, there will be a module meant to complete the training of the modern master-level civil engineering including appropriate juridical competences in administrative law. Instead, in the structures and infrastructures field issues linked to dynamics will be deepened and in particular, earthquake engineering, material technologies used in civil engineering and in tunnels and foundations engineering as issues related to the modeling of the mechanical behavior of rocky masses, with the numerical modeling of rocks and grounds, with the study of the dynamic behavior of grounds and the estimates on the stability of natural and artificial slopes will be dealt with.