Geometric Design Project for First Year Civil Engineering Students

Transportation engineering is an important sub-discipline of most Civil Engineering programs. Road design is a significant section of transportation engineering. One major aspect of road design is a geometric design that focuses on locating the road on a topographic map. Introduction to Engineering is a laboratory-based course for first-year students at the authors' university. In this course, students work on a civil engineering related project during the semester. In Spring 2019 and 2020 semester students were introduced to geometric design by working on a road design project. Three main sections were implemented in this project. The first piece was understanding of topographic map. In this piece, students were asked to select a non-flat site located in the United States. The topographic map of the selected site was provided to students. Students were asked to draw the topographic map in SOLID WORKS or AutoCAD – Civil 3D and print their files using a 3D-printer. In the next section of the project, students were asked to design a road between two points of their topographic map. In this part of the project, students were introduced to geometric design including horizontal and vertical curves. Students designed three roads between the selected points, using a ruler and compass, and drew a vertical profile of each option on a grid paper. In the last section of the project, students learned the concept of earthwork in road design. Students calculated the volume of soil needed to be cut and fill for all three options. Finally, students picked their final design by studying steps two and three. This module worked well to teach the concepts of geometric design to first-year civil engineering students.