Civil Engineering Basics and Material Properties

Vocabulary flashcards covering civil engineering sub-disciplines, structural loads, design safety parameters, and mechanical material properties as presented in the lecture notes.

Civil engineering

design, build, and maintain the foundations of modern society

Structural Engineering

Focuses on structural integrity, load bearing capacities, and material limits.

Geotechnical Engineering

behavior of earth material. It’s crucial for design of foundations.

Transportation Engineering

Plans, designs, and builds and maintains sustems of safe transportations of highways, railroads, and others.

Water Resources Engineering

Designs hydraulic structures like dams, aqueducts, and canals.

Environmental Engineering

Integrates biology and chemistry to treat sewage, mitigate urban runoff, design clean drinking water, and control air pollution.

Construction Engineering

Manages physical execution of designs.

Factor of Safety

Simple ratio showing how much stronger a system needs to be to support its maximum load.

Margin of Safety

Extra load-carrying capacity a structure has beyond what it is expected to handle.

Materials

A core category covering structural loading, deformation, and mechanical material behavior.

Static Load

A fixed force applied slowly and gradually to a structure

Dynamic Load

a force that changes quickly over time in its size, shape, speed, or place.

Bending

The behavior of a structural element when an external load acts perpendicular to its longitudinal axis, causing it to curve.

Buckling

A sudden sideways, bending or collapsing of a structural manner under a pushing force.

Deformation

change in the shape size or position of a material, structural element or foundation when subjected to external loads, internal stresses, temperature changes or ground settlement.

Compression

A pushing or squeezing force that acts in a material or structural element, trying to shorten compact or crush it.

Strain

Measure of how much a material deforms relative to its original size and shape when it experiences an external load or force.

Tension

A cooling force that stretches or tries to pull a material apart.

Stress

internal resistance, force that a material generates to oppose on external road or force.

Torsion

twisting of a structural number, caused by an applied rotational force or torque around its longitude axis.

Strength

A materials ability to withstand and applied to external load or force without breaking cracking or permanently bending.

Brittleness

A material that fractures or snap suddenly underload without giving any prior warning or undergoing significant plastic deformation.

Shear

A force or stress that pushes parallel to the surface of a material.

Ductility

A materials ability to bend stretch or deform under heavy load without breaking.

Yield Point

specific stress level where a material stop stretching elastically and begins to deform permanently.

Fatigue

gradual, weakening and fracturing of building materials caused by repeated cyclic loading and unloading overtime,

Hardness

A materials resistance to surface changes, like scratching cutting abrasion or permanent denting.

Anisotropy

immaterial has different physical or mechanical properties when measured in different directions.

Stiffness

structural element or material to resist, bending stretching or twisting when an external load is applied.

Toughness

Materials ability to absorb energy and bend or stretch before it finally breaks.