History of civil engineering

Pont du Gard, France, a Roman aqueduct built circa 19 BC.

Civil engineering is the application of physical and scientific principles, and its history is intricately linked to advances in understanding of physics and mathematics throughout history. Because civil engineering is a wide ranging profession, including several separate specialized sub-disciplines, its history is linked to knowledge of structures, materials science, geography, geology, soils, hydrology, environment, mechanics and other fields.
Throughout ancient and medieval history most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans, such as stonemasons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Knowledge was retained in guilds and seldom supplanted by advances. Structures, roads and infrastructure that existed were repetitive, and increases in scale were incremental.
One of the earliest examples of a scientific approach to physical and mathematical problems applicable to civil engineering is the work of Archimedes in the 3rd century BC, including Archimedes Principle, which underpins our understanding of buoyancy, and practical solutions such as Archimedes' screw. Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, used arithmetic in the 7th century AD, based on Hindu-Arabic numerals, for excavation (volume) computations.

History of the civil engineering profession

The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland.

Engineering has been an aspect of life since the beginnings of human existence. The earliest practices of Civil engineering may have commenced between 4000 and 2000 BC in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (Ancient Iraq) when humans started to abandon a nomadic existence, thus causing a need for the construction of shelter. During this time, transportation became increasingly important leading to the development of the wheel and sailing.
Until modern times there was no clear distinction between civil engineering and architecture, and the term engineer and architect were mainly geographical variations referring to the same person, often used interchangeably. The construction of Pyramids in Egypt (circa 2700-2500 BC) might be considered the first instances of large structure constructions. Other ancient historic civil engineering constructions include the Qanat water management system (the oldest older than 3000 years and longer than 71 km,) the Parthenon by Iktinos in Ancient Greece (447-438 BC), the Appian Way by Roman engineers (c. 312 BC), the Great Wall of China by General Meng T'ien under orders from Ch'in Emperor Shih Huang Ti (c. 220 BC) and the stupas constructed in ancient Sri Lanka like the Jetavanaramaya and the extensive irrigation works in Anuradhapura. The Romans developed civil structures throughout their empire, including especially aqueducts, insulae, harbours, bridges, dams and roads.

The Archimedes screw could raise water efficiently.

In the 18th century, the term civil engineering was coined to incorporate all things civilian as opposed to military engineering. The first self-proclaimed civil engineer was John Smeaton who constructed the Eddystone Lighthouse. In 1771 Smeaton and some of his colleagues formed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, a group of leaders of the profession who met informally over dinner. Though there was evidence of some technical meetings, it was little more than a social society.
In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in London, and in 1820 the eminent engineer Thomas Telford became its first president. The institution received a Royal Charter in 1828, formally recognising civil engineering as a profession. Its charter defined civil engineering as:

the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man, as the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal trade, as applied in the construction of roads, bridges, aqueducts, canals, river navigation and docks for internal intercourse and exchange, and in the construction of ports, harbours, moles, breakwaters and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by artificial power for the purposes of commerce, and in the construction and application of machinery, and in the drainage of cities and towns.

The first private college to teach Civil Engineering in the United States was Norwich University founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge. The first degree in Civil Engineering in the United States was awarded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1835. The first such degree to be awarded to a woman was granted by Cornell University to Nora Stanton Blatch in 1905.

Civil engineering

The Petronas Twin Towers, designed by architect Cesar Pelli and Thornton Tomasetti and Ranhill Bersekutu Sdn Bhd engineers, were the world's tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004.

Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like bridges, roads, canals, dams, and buildings. Civil engineering is the oldest engineering discipline after military engineering, and it was defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering. It is traditionally broken into several sub-disciplines including environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, transportation engineering, municipal or urban engineering, water resources engineering, materials engineering, coastal engineering, surveying, and construction engineering. Civil engineering takes place on all levels: in the public sector from municipal through to national governments, and in the private sector from individual homeowners through to international companies.

Applications and practice of chemical engineering

Chemical engineers use computers to manage automated systems in plants.

Chemical engineers "develop economic ways of using materials and energy" as opposed to chemists who are more interested in the basic composition of materials and synthesizing products from such. Chemical engineers use chemistry and engineering to turn raw materials into useable products, such as medicine, petrochemicals and plastics. They are also involved in waste management and research. Both applied and research facets make extensive use of computers.
A chemical engineer may be involved in industry or university research where he is tasked in designing and performing experiments to create new and better ways of production, controlling pollution, conserving resources and making these processes safer. He may be involved in designing and constructing plants as a project engineer. In this field, the chemical engineer uses his knowledge in selecting plant equipment and the optimum method of production to minimize costs and increase profitability. After its construction, he may help in upgrading its equipment. He may also be involved in its daily operations.

Chemical engineering involves the application of several principles.Key concepts are presented below.

Part of a series on Chemical engineering
History
Concepts Unit operations Unit processes Chemical engineer Chemical process
Unit operations Momentum transfer Heat transfer Mass transfer Mechanical operations
Unit process Chemical reaction engineering Chemical kinetics Chemical process modeling Chemical technology
Branches Process design  · Fluid mechanics Process systems engineering Chemical plant design Chemical thermodynamics Transport phenomena  · *More*
others Outline of chemical engineering Index of chemical engineering articles Education for chemical engineers List of chemical engineers List of chemical engineering societies List of chemical process simulators Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook
Category:Chemical engineering

Chemical reaction engineering

Chemical reactions engineering involves managing plant processes and conditions to ensure optimal plant operation. Chemical reaction engineers construct models for reactor analysis and design using laboratory data and physical parameters, such as chemical thermodynamics, to solve problems and predict reactor performance.

Plant design

Chemical engineering design concerns the creation of plans and specification, and income projection of plants. Chemical engineers generate designs according to the clients needs. Design is limited by a number of factors, including funding, government regulations and safety standards. These constraints dictate a plant's choice of process, materials and equipment.

Process design

A unit operation is a physical step in an individual chemical engineering process. Unit operations (such as crystallization, drying and evaporation) are used to prepare reactants, purifying and separating its products, recycling unspent reactants, and controlling energy transfer in reactors. On the other hand, a unit process is the chemical equivalent of a unit operation. Along with unit operations, unit processes constitute a process operation. Unit processes (such as nitration and oxidation) involve the conversion of material by biochemical, thermochemical and other means. Chemical engineers responsible for these are called process engineers. 

Transport phenomena

Transport phenomena occur frequently in industrial problems. These include fluid dynamics, heat transfer and mass transfer, which mainly concern momentum transfer, energy transfer and transport of chemical species respectively. Basic equations for describing the three transport phenomena in the macroscopic, microscopic and molecular levels are very similar. Thus, understanding transport phenomena requires thorough understanding of mathematics.

History of chemical engineering (2)

New concepts and innovations

The Union Carbide India Limited plant

By the 1940s, it became clear that unit operations alone was insufficient in developing chemical reactors. While the predominance of unit operations in chemical engineering courses in Britain and the United States continued until the 1960s, transport phenomena started to experience greater focus. Along with other novel concepts, such process systems engineering (PSE), a "second paradigm" was defined. Transport phenomena gave an analytical approach to chemical engineering while PSE focused on its synthetic elements, such as control system and process design. Developments in chemical engineering before and after World War II were mainly incited by the petrochemical industry, however, advances in other fields were made as well. Advancements in biochemical engineering in the 1940s, for example, found application in the pharmaceutical industry, and allowed for the mass production of various antibiotics, including penicillin and streptomycin. Meanwhile, progress in polymer science in the 1950s paved way for the "age of plastics".

Lag and environmental awareness

 

The years after the 1950s are viewed to have lacked major chemical innovations. Additional uncertainty was presented by declining prices of energy and raw materials between 1950 and 1973. Concerns regarding the safety and environmental impact of large-scale chemical manufacturing facilities were also raised during which period. Silent Spring, published in 1962, alerted its readers of the harmful effects of DDT, a potent insecticide. The 1974 Flixborough disaster in the United Kingdom resulted in the death of 28, and damage of a chemical plant and three nearby villages. The 1984 Bhopal disaster in India which killed almost 4,000. These along with other incidents affected the reputation of the trade as industrial safety and environmental protection was given more focus. In response, the IChemE required safety to be part of every degree course that it accredited after 1982. By the 1970s, legislation and monitoring agencies were instituted in various countries, such as France, Germany and the United States.

Recent progress

 

Advancements in computer science found applications designing and managing plants, simplifying calculations and drawings that previously have to be done manually. The completion of the Human Genome Project is also seen as a major development, not only advancing chemical engineering but genetic engineering and genomics as well. Chemical engineering principles were used to produce DNA sequences in large quantities. While the application of chemical engineering principles to these fields only began in the 1990s, Rice University researchers see this as a trend towards biotechnology.

History of chemical engineering

Chemical engineering emerged upon the development of unit operations, a fundamental concept of the discipline. Most authors agree that Davis invented unit operations if not substantially developed it. He gave a series of lectures on unit operations at the Manchester Technical School (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology today) in 1887, considered to be one of the earliest such about chemical engineering. Three years before Davis' lectures, Henry Edward Armstrong taught a degree course in chemical engineering at the City and Guilds of London Institute. Armstrong's course "failed simply because its graduates ... were not especially attractive to employers." Employers of the time would have rather hired chemists and mechanical engineers. Courses in chemical engineering offered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, Owen's College in Manchester, England and University College London suffered under similar circumstances.

Students inside an industrial chemistry laboratory at MIT

Starting from 1888, Lewis M. Norton taught at MIT the first chemical engineering course in the United States. Norton's course was contemporaneous and essentially similar with Armstrong's course. Both courses, however, simply merged chemistry and engineering subjects. "Its practitioners had difficulty convincing engineers that they were engineers and chemists that they were not simply chemists." Unit operations was introduced into the course by William Hultz Walker in 1905. By the early 1920s, unit operations became an important aspect of chemical engineering at MIT and other US universities, as well as at Imperial College London. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), established in 1908, played a key role in making chemical engineering considered an independent science, and unit operations central to chemical engineering. For instance, it defined chemical engineering to be a "science of itself, the basis of which is ... unit operations" in a 1922 report; and with which principle, it had published a list of academic institutions which offered "satisfactory" chemical engineering courses. Meanwhile, promoting chemical engineering as a distinct science in Britain lead to the establishment of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) in 1922. IChemE likewise helped make unit operations considered essential to the discipline.