Experiment Design for Civil Engineering: Methods and Examples

Francis J. Hopcroft, Abigail J. Charest

“This textbook provides guidance to students and practicing civil engineers on how to design a civil engineering experiment that will produce useful and unassailable results. It includes a long list of complete experiment designs that students can perform in the laboratory at most universities and that many consulting engineers can do in corporate laboratories. These experiments also provide a way to evaluate a new design against an existing experiment to determine what information is most appropriate in each section and how to format the data for the most effective outcome. Interpretation of output data is discussed, along with uncertainty, as well as optimal presentation of the data to others. Fills in the gap in ABET requirements to teach experiment design. Provides a standardized approach to experiment design that can work for any experiment. Includes completed experiment designs suitable for college laboratory and professional applications. Shows how to organize experimental data as it is collected to optimize usefulness. Provides templates for design of the experiment and for presenting the resulting data to technical and non-technical audiences or clients”–