PhD Civil Engineering: The University of Manchester

Course description

Research Groups

• Energy, Environment and Climate Change: Energy, environment and climate change research are strongly interlinked. The challenges for energy research will increase against a background of climate change, changing energy provision within uncertain world politics, increasing world population, increasing pollution and need for control and remediation. The group's environmental research covers hydro/morphodynamic and geotechnical processes, particularly associated with pollution dispersion/migration and sediment transport, the built environment and urban aerodynamics. There is strong underpinning capability in computational fluid dynamics and soil mechanics, multi-phase flows, sprays, turbulence modelling and heat transfer.

• Extreme Loading and Design: To ensure a safe society from accidental events (fires, impact, gas explosions, errors in design, etc.), natural occurrences (hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, etc.) or terrorist attack, there is a need to understand both material and whole structural response under extreme loads.

  Manchester has a well-known track record in researching the behaviour of structures under fire, explosions, impact energy absorption, dynamic response, and high strain rate material response.

• Experts Groups
  • Built Environment
  • Coastal Processes
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Construction Science
  • Geo-Engineering
  • Structures and Fire

• Examples of current and recently completed PhD projects

• Available postgraduate research topics

Course aims

A PhD is the target of most postgraduate students who relish the opportunity to undertake a research project with intellectual, scientific, industrial or commercial challenges. Those from industrial backgrounds may also find it possible to partake in this level of graduate work, which is of particular value to the individuals training and development.

Depending on your education and work experience you may register directly for a PhD Degree, however some students will initially register for an MPhil degree, where after one year if satisfactory progress is made you will progress onto the second year of a PhD.

For both a direct PhD and MPhil-PhD degree the period of study would be three years full-time or the part-time equivalent. Students would also be permitted to register as a writing-up student for 12 months at the end of the degree to complete your dissertation.

This programme route is also available as a split-site option, which enables overseas students to split their studies between the UK and their home country. If a student would like to take this route a supervisor must be appointed in the UK and overseas, and confirmation of free time and study plan must be approved by both supervisors.

Entry requirements

Academic entry qualification overview:

A student may be admitted to a PhD degree only if an appropriate research environment is available for the duration of the degree. This should include the availability of appropriate academic staff to provide supervision and training, other research-support staff, research facilities and learning resources.

Applicants for admission will normally hold a Bachelors degree or equivalent qualification, a Masters Degree or equivalent qualification, or both. The level of attainment for the Bachelor's degree will normally be equivalent to that of a First Class or Upper Second Class Honours UK Bachelor's degree. Some areas of study may require a Master's level qualification in a relevant discipline for admission to a PhD. Professional qualifications other than a Bachelor's Degree and/or relevant and appropriate experience may be taken into account for entry to a PhD degree.

Applicants for admission to PhD who do not meet the above criteria, but who hold a Bachelor's degree with Lower Second Class Honours or equivalent qualification, may be admitted to the degree of MPhil in the first instance. Following completion of one year's registration, candidates will be required to demonstrate, through a formal progress report and meeting that they have achieved a satisfactory performance in terms of a standard consistent with the award of the degree of MPhil, in order to be allowed to progress to year two of PhD registration.

English language:

All applicants will need to demonstrate competency in the English language. Applicants who do not already posses a recognised English Language qualification will need to take a recognised test such as IELTS or TOEFL and attain a minimum of IELTS 6.5 ( with no sub test less than 5.5), TOEFL 570 with 5.0 in the TWE (Computer-based 230 or above or Internet-based 88-89 or above).