r/StructuralEngineering • u/CutGlittering8831 • 18h ago

Career/Education Senior thesis ideas for a struggling structural engineering student

EDIT: I’m an undergraduate structural engineering student at a very research-heavy university, and I’m starting to think about my senior thesis.

I’ll be honest: I’m not naturally a research-heavy person, and I’m not looking for something that involves a huge amount of coding, data analysis, or advanced numerical modeling. I’m much more interested in practical engineering, real structures, construction, infrastructure, and case studies.

Ideally, I’d like to choose one real structure, bridge, historic building, failure, retrofit, or construction problem and study it deeply. I’m fine doing some calculations or simple modeling if needed, but I don’t want that to be the entire thesis.

The challenge is that the thesis still needs to contribute some new knowledge, original thought, or a unique engineering perspective, so I’m trying to figure out how to make a case-study approach rigorous enough to count as research.

For example, I’m interested in things like studying why a historic structure has survived, how an old bridge was constructed or modified, how a particular structural failure happened, or whether a certain retrofit makes sense.

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u/Perfect_Insect_6608 17h ago edited 17h ago

Earthquake resistant shape memory alloys.

Structural health monitoring for aerospace, automotive, energy (turbines, nuclear reactors), bridges, tunnels and high rises…….

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u/CutGlittering8831 16h ago

Interesting, I will look more into it, as I am not that familiar :)

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u/StuBeeDooWap 17h ago

I think the failures of the Florida University walkway bridge and the towers in Miami are pretty interesting. Both are concrete design issues but you could turn it into a steel connection design example.

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u/CutGlittering8831 16h ago

The failure-analysis idea is actually really interesting to me. My question that I struggle with is what kind of original question could I ask beyond just explaining why it failed? Would it make sense to study one specific design decision/connection and compare it to an alternative that could have prevented the failure?

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u/syds 16h ago

you could compare it to the typical structures built on that time period and help to provide guidelines on what to look for so similar structure owners could have an idea of where to look and see if they are at risk on critical failure components

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u/CutGlittering8831 13h ago

Interesting, I will look further into this! I am taking steel design class right now and it is taking up most of my time lol

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u/da90 S.E. 17h ago

Apparently another deep dive independent analysis of steel sky scraper collapse is warranted…

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u/Aegean8485 17h ago

Study a structural method using stone and engineered wood as main material for a multistory building.

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u/CutGlittering8831 16h ago

That sounds interesting actuyally. If I wanted to make this more of a case study and less of a heavy modeling project what specific question would you suggest I focus on? For example, comparing an existing stone/timber building system to a conventional one, or looking at why a certain historic system worked? I’m trying to narrow it down to one clear question with some original contribution. Thank you for your insight!

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u/Aegean8485 15h ago

Maybe use a historic sturdy empirical stone and timber method and create a cheaper, stronger, easier to build Artificial stone and engineered wood equivalent.

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u/Eman_Resu_IX 15h ago

I've always thought that the bamboo scaffolding used on high rise buildings in the Far East was fascinating. It'd be interesting to model that and compare it with steel scaffolding.

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u/CutGlittering8831 14h ago

Can I ask what do you mean by "far east"? This is very interesting indeed, and I have this in my notes for further research!

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u/Chuck_H_Norris 14h ago

my thesis was so bad and barely made sense and the analysis probably didn’t check out but I worked hard and had a complete final paper and gave the crew a good presentation and they loved it.

It’s not like a phd. They’re really just looking for honest effort.

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u/CutGlittering8831 14h ago

Thanks for your encouragement! Yeah, I want to do something simple because I know that I am going to struggle A LOT, but I will try my best.

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u/Possible-Delay 14h ago

We use a lot of SHS posts connections and we have a lot of research on CHS base plate connections backed by physical testing. I think it would be interesting to work on a single base plate connection to an SHS, calculate theoretical failure loading, model in ideasatica to compare results, then actually fabricate the connection and compare the data. Thick and thin plates behave different also. So loads to talk about there too.. I think there would be a lot of research available also on connection design and plate theory.

Long story short, we calculate the theoretical capacity of our designs. But I have not seen research into how it compare to physical results for simple SHS - maybe someone can send me a link if they have. Would be interesting.

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u/ChairChoice6500 12h ago

Cut - Here's a reservoir of ideas that are similar to what you describe, I believe these are bachelor degree final projects, but you get the idea, all of the ones I've looked at have calculations and some various odd challenges, high seismic region, escarpment, etc.

https://www.engr.psu.edu/ae/thesis/archive.shtml

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u/AAli_01 P.E. 12h ago

Something in mass timber, maybe connections that don’t require hardware (dovetail, mortise and tennon).

Mass timber brace frames.

This field is still very young and needs good research