College

College of Engineering and Polymer Science

Date of Last Revision

2025-06-04 12:48:51

Major

Civil Engineering

Honors Course

CIVE 497: Honors Project

Number of Credits

3

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Date of Expected Graduation

Spring 2025

Abstract

The purpose of this Honors Research project was to explore the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the Engineering Discipline as a whole. Specifically, civil engineering’s discipline of transportation was used to display the effectiveness of AI in engineering. This discipline was used due to its wide use in engineering and overall designs that can be created within this discipline. These designs include maintenance of traffic plans, engineering plan sets, horizontal and vertical curve design, intersection design, traffic signaling, highway material design, and phasing of intersections and traffic accounting for pedestrians. Through similar prompts that were given to a publicly available AI program, the efficiency of AI in assisting in the creation and design of engineering plans has been determined. Engineering professional societies such as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and independent engineers have done similar studies to determine the appropriate the use of AI in engineering and how the tool can be both helpful and harmful to the engineering discipline. Over the course of the study, these research documents were referenced in order to gather initial ideas as well as provide a comparison for the findings over the course of this paper’s research. This paper’s research concludes with final thoughts regarding AI in both its benefits and drawbacks to the engineering discipline as a whole. The research aims to shed light on exactly what engineers or engineering students can come to expect of artificial intelligence as a tool to the discipline and provide examples for the conclusions that are drawn.

Research Sponsor

Ping Yi

First Reader

Wieslaw Binienda

Second Reader

Ala Abbas

Honors Faculty Advisor

Ping Yi

Proprietary and/or Confidential Information

No

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