Civil Engineering - Contours, Road Design, and Earthwork

This lecture covers the fundamentals of roadway and topographic design in civil engineering. It begins with a review of topography and an explanation of how contour lines are used to describe terrain, followed by instruction on road design. This included detailed descriptions of horizontal alignment, vertical curves, and section cuts. The discussion also addressed traffic design speeds and how they are calculated, as well as roadway earthwork and balancing cut and fill quantities. These concepts were presented within the broader engineering design process, which often begins with hand sketches for early schematic design and then advances to the use of full 3D digital terrain models and CAD software to fully design and define the roadway geometry.