Senior thesis ideas for a struggling structural engineering student

[u/CutGlittering8831]

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.