Civil Engineering

From developing innovative new construction materials, to investigating the sustainability of managed realignment coastal protection schemes, our Civil Engineering staff and PhD students at the University of Brighton are at the leading edge of research into the ways materials, soils, structures and engineered systems respond to forces imposed by the natural environment.

The majority of our work has real-world application. Data generated by researchers in our Sustainability and Resilience Engineering Research and Enterprise Group (SuRE) is being used, for example, in the design and redesign of structures in earthquake-prone regions, the smart management of infrastructure assets such as highway bridges, and the geotechnical engineering of foundation systems for wind turbines.

Key facts

As a Civil Engineering Civil Engineering PhD student at University of Brighton University of Brighton , you will benefit from:

•  a supervisory team comprising two to three members of academic staff. Depending on your research specialism you may also have an additional external supervisor from another school, another research institution, or industry.

• All students are provided with desk space and access to a desktop PC, either in one of the postgraduate offices on the sixth floor of the award-winning Cockcroft Building, or within the adjacent Heavy Engineering Block. You will additionally benefit from access to a range of electronic resources via the University’s Online Library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within the Aldrich Library and other campus libraries.

• PhD students within the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering are able to use various state-of-the-art research facilities on the Moulsecoomb site, including specialist geochemical and geotechnical laboratories, microbial and water quality laboratories, hydraulic flumes, an experimental river basin, a water efficiency laboratory, microscopy laboratories (optical and scanning electron microscopes), and a concrete laboratory, as well as a large array of field equipment. All of these facilities are supported by a team of dedicated laboratory and workshop technicians.

• All postgraduate students working on civil engineering topics are integrated into one or more of our Research Groups (see below). These groups provide you with opportunities to present ‘work in progress’ and network with other researchers.

• The Brighton Doctoral College offer a training programme for postgraduate researchers, covering research methods and transferable (including employability) skills.

Our particular areas of specialism currently include:

• Advanced construction materials

• Coastal, estuarine and river engineering

• Geotechnical engineering

• Resilient structures and earthquake engineering

• Smart infrastructure asset management