CE29900 – Introduction to the Engineering of Water, 1cr.
This co-taught course is a hands-on introduction to water engineering. The course is aimed at providing first- and second-year engineering students exposure to topics in water engineering, as well as directly introducing students to some of the faculty members who teach water subjects. The course meets weekly, typically for the first 5 weeks of the semester, in a series of 3-hour active classes. Each week, a different instructor highlights a new topic or problem related to water engineering, and activities have ranged from computer modeling of flooding to ReNew House field trips and experiments in local streams. Topics vary between semesters, but previous classes have learned about swimming pool chemistry (Dr. Chip Blatchley), pollution in streams (Dr. Antoine Aubeneau), drinking water contamination (Dr. Amisha Shah), building water supplies (Dr. Rao Govindaraju), nutrient loading (Dr. Cary Troy, me), and flood modeling (Dr. Venkatesh Merwade). If you think you might be interested in becoming a water engineer, this course is a great way to learn more about the field and the professors you’ll have down the road. We teach this class most semesters.
CE34000 – Hydraulics, 3cr.
Hydraulics, or fluid mechanics, is the study of how fluids behave at rest and in motion, and the interaction between fluids and objects in contact with the fluids. In this course we primarily deal with water and air, and learn the basic principles that can be used to solve related engineering problems. Course topics include fluid properties; hydrostatic pressure and forces on submerged surfaces; fluid kinematics and the Bernoulli Equation; steady and unsteady conservation of mass; conservation of linear momentum; viscous flow in pipes; drag and lift on submerged objects; and open channel flow. Applications for these topics can include water supply systems, reservoirs, pipelines, boats and submersibles, wind loads on buildings, water treatment, rockets (sorry, but it is rocket science!), rivers and streams, drainage, and more. This course is required of all Purdue Civil Engineers, with a grade of C- or better. I teach this course every other spring, i.e. ’22,’24, etc.
CE34300 – Hydraulics Laboratory, 1cr.
Hydraulics Laboratory is a 1-credit laboratory course comprised of hands-on experiments related to the concepts learned in Hydraulics (CE34000). This course can be taken either concurrently or after you take Hydraulics (CE34000). Hydraulics Laboratory has weekly 3 hour labs with companion exercises that involve data collection, data analysis and graphing, uncertainty, and technical communication. You will generally write 2 “formal reports” during the semester in which you synthesize the results of an experiment into polished technical documents. Laboratory experiments typically include: manometers; flow visualization; flow in pipes; drag on objects; and more. This course is required of all undergraduate Purdue Civil Engineers, with a grade of C- or better.
CE44300 – Introductory Environmental Fluid Mechanics, 3cr.
This course provides a structured introduction to the fluid mechanics related to natural fluid systems, including streams, rivers, lakes, the atmosphere, and oceans. The course is structured around the basic flow processes and features common to many environmental flows, including boundary layers, free surfaces, gravity and reduced gravity, diffusion and dispersion, the effect of the Earth’s rotation (NOT seen in your toilet bowl, you will learn!), turbulence, density stratification, sediment transport, unsteadiness, and viscosity. We learn these concepts through the lenses of many relevant environmental flows, including the atmospheric boundary layer, hurricanes, streams and rivers, lakes, and more. Some laboratory demonstrations are also typically conducted as part of the class and class projects allow students to go into depth about a topic of their choice.
CE54300 – Coastal Engineering, 3cr.
Coastal Engineering is the engineering field that deals with the design of harbors, breakwaters, shoreline protections, beaches, inlets, and other coastal elements. This course introduces you to the basic scientific and engineering principles that underly coastal engineering for both ocean and Great Lakes coastlines. The course provides an introduction to the basic physical processes important to coastal engineering, including surface water waves, water level variations, sediment transport, and shorelines. You will also learn to perform some basic designs in coastal engineering, with applications that include submerged and emerged breakwaters, seawalls and revetments, beach nourishments, and more. This course counts as a technical elective and design course for undergraduate students in Purdue’s Civil Engineering program. I teach this course every fall.
CE54700 – Transport Processes in Surface Waters, 3cr.
This graduate-level course examines the physical processes underlying the movement and dilution of substances traveling in rivers, lakes, the oceans. We start with the concept of 1-D Fickian diffusion (Brownian motion) and gradually expand our analysis to steady shear flow dispersion in rivers and streams. Additional topics include unsteady dispersion (e.g. oscillatory shear flows), coastal dispersion, offshore dispersion, vertical mixing in stratified waters, and the flushing of basins.
CE59700 – Advanced Topics in Coastal Engineering, 3cr.
This is a follow-on course to my coastal engineering course (CE54300), where we dive deeper into various topics in coastal engineering. Topics vary depending on student interests and backgrounds, but sample focus areas include: Boussinesq wave modeling; harbor hydrodynamics and harbor design; shoreline protection methods; laboratory and field techniques in coastal engineering; extreme events and design approaches; and others.
CE59700 – Environmental Fluid Mechanics, 3cr.
This course provides an introduction to the fluid mechanics of environmental flows and processes, with a basis in the underlying mathematical equations and solutions for simplified cases. Exact topics covered in a given semester vary, but have included shallow water flows, rotational flows, free surface flows, unsteady flows (e.g. water waves and Stokes boundary layers), density-stratified flows, instabilities, turbulence, and more.
Assessment and characterization of writing exercises and core engineering textbooks
Essig, R.R., C.D. Troy, B.K. Jesiek, N.T. Buswell, and J.E. Boyd Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 144(4): 04018007. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000378
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Engineering instructors on writing: Perceptions, practices, and needs
Buswell, N.T., B.K. Jesiek, C.D. Troy, R.R. Essig, and J. Boyd IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. DOI 10.1109/TPC.2019.2893392
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Why this flip wasn’t a flop: What the numbers don’t tell you about flipped classes
Fedesco, H.N., and C.D. Troy In Proceedings of the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, New Orleans, LA, June 26-29, 2016
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Challenges and opportunities for recruiting students to undergraduate civil engineering programs
Troy, C.D., J. Bruntz, R.S. Govindaraju, G. Haikal, J.D. Horn, M.M. Kelly, M.G. Schroeder, J. See, and J.C. Tompkins In Proceedings of the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, New Orleans, LA, June 26-29, 2016
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Engineering faculty on writing: What they think and what they want
Trellinger, N.M., B.K. Jesiek, C.D. Troy, J. Boyd, and R.R. Essig In Proceedings of the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, New Orleans, LA, June 26-29, 2016
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Writing to learn engineering: Identifying effective techniques for the integration of written communication into engineering classes and curricula (NSF RIGEE project)
Troy, C.D., B.K. Jesiek, N.M. Trellinger, and R.R. Essig In Proceedings of the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, New Orleans, LA, June 26-29, 2016
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Something to write home(work) about: An analysis of writing exercises in fluid mechanics textbooks
Trellinger, N.M., R.R. Essig, C.D. Troy, B.K. Jesiek, J. Boyd In Proceedings of the 2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Seattle, WA, June 14-17, 2015
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Adventures in paragraph writing: The development and refinement of scalable and effective writing exercises for large-enrollment engineering courses
Essig, R., C. Troy, B.K. Jesiek, J. Boyd, and N.M. Trellinger In Proceedings of the 2014 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Indianapolis, IN, June 15-18, 2014
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Writing to learn engineering: Identifying effective fechniques for the integration of written communication into engineering classes and curricula (NSF RIGEE project)
Troy, C.D., R.R. Essig, B.K. Jesiek, J. Boyd, N.M. Trellinger In Proceedings of the 2014 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Indianapolis, IN, June 15-18, 2014
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