Civil Engineering, Ph.D. Distance Learning

Swansea University has been at the forefront of international research in Civil and Computational Engineering for over 50 years. From the 1960s onwards, the Department of Civil Engineering was home to the internationally recognised researcher Prof Olek Zienkiewicz, known as one of the pioneering developers of the Finite Element Method (FEM). This fundamental technique lies at the heart of most modern engineering computation and simulation software in use today.

The Department of Civil Engineering is ranked: Top 25 in the UK for Research Quality (Complete University Guide 2025) Top 25 in the UK for Research Rating (Times Good University Guide 2025) Top 201-240 in the World for Engineering – Civil & Structural (QS World University Rankings 2024), and 100% of our Research Environment is Ranked as World-leading and Internationally Excellent (REF 2021) Top 150 (Shanghai Rankings (Academic Rankings of World Universities) - Subject Rankings 2024) Today the Department of Civil Engineering possesses both strength and breadth in many key areas of modern Civil Engineering research, with research groups active in the following research themes: Coastal and Water Engineering Research Group: Our researchers use novel computational modelling, Artificial Intelligence techniques, and experimental and field-derived data to investigate coastal processes, hydrometeorology, river dynamics, and flood risk, covering both fundamental and applied research. Transportation Engineering: Transportation infrastructure serves as a crucial foundation for our society. Our researchers use cutting-edge technologies to develop resilient, sustainable and intelligent transportation systems that address the urgent challenges caused by the climate emergency.

Their innovative work spans self-powered smart sensing, self-healing road materials, low-carbon-asphalt, wireless sensor networks for intelligent transportation monitoring, physics-informed machine learning for advanced data analysis, and energy harvesting on road infrastructures. Civil Engineering Materials and Sustainable Practice: We use our extensive laboratory facilities and cross-disciplinary expertise to partner with industry to investigate a diverse range of novel sustainable construction materials, with a focus on low-carbon and sustainable materials. Themes of research include low-carbon concretes, alkali-activated cementitious mortars, ultra high performance concretes, geopolymers and recycled aggregates.

Solids, Structures and Coupled Systems: Our researchers develop leading edge computational strategies to simulate a wide range of physical problems and engineering applications covering broadly the area of solids, structures and coupled systems. The main topics include computational solid mechanics, materials modelling, fracture mechanics, frictional contact, granular media, geomechanics and fluid-structure Interaction. Computational Engineering: Our researchers develop cutting-edge computational methods to simulate a va