Find out more about studying Advanced Geotechnical Engineering MSc at University of Surrey? We've gathered all the key details, entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
MSc - Master of Science
Online/Distance Learning
Part Time
Sep 2026
5 Year
Geotechnical engineering – the mechanics of the Earth’s materials – is a sector with a huge global skills shortage. This means that well-trained geotechnical engineers are in high demand.Our Advanced Geotechnical Engineering MSc will equip you with the necessary skills and knowledge to pursue an exciting career in the geotechnical engineering sector, including offshore and earthquake geotechnics.You’ll be taught in highly specialised facilities, such as our Geotechnics and Geology Teaching Laboratory, by academics who are leaders in their field. Throughout your course, you’ll also benefit from the expert knowledge of specialist guest speakers, including visiting academics and engineers working in industry. You'll also have the opportunity to undertake a postgraduate placement year if you choose our placement pathway, allowing you to gain crucial workplace experience. We’ll support you in finding a placement with a company most suited to your career goals. We’re preparing you for the future by integrating AI into every course, building digital skills, confidence and creativity that employers value in tomorrow’s workplace.
This module is designed to provide insights into aspects of advanced soil mechanics, which are necessary to carry out design of geotechnical structures and foundations.
Civil engineers are often called on to design systems that will support large structures at depth or steep / vertical faces in soil. The former case will normally require large foundations, sometimes at depth whereas the latter may require an earth-retaining structure of some kind. Ground modifications techniques are often employed to improve the physical properties of ground before construction begins. This module applies the basic principles of soil mechanics to the safe and sustainable design of large foundations and earth-retaining structures.
The module provides an opportunity for masters students to undertake, guided, individual research into a topic related to their programme of study. Students are required to take independent ownership of their project and demonstrate this through their management of the available resources, including meetings with project supervisor(s), the timely acquisition of relevant information and experimental results.
This module is designed to provide necessary geotechnical design concepts of deep foundation and deep geological storage facilities related to some of the current and emerging energy projects. They include renewable energy systems (offshore and onshore wind turbine generator foundations), foundations for offshore oil and gas installations, geothermal energy pile foundation and nuclear power plant foundations There will also be specialised lectures on high level nuclear waste disposal and carbon geo-sequestration, methane hydrates and compressed air energy storage.
Geotechnical engineers and structural engineers tend to approach soil-structure interaction problems quite differently. On the one hand, geotechnical engineers take great care over the representation of the soil, but then often assume the structure to be either perfectly flexible or perfectly rigid. Structural engineers, on the other hand, may spend a great deal of time ensuring the structure is modelled as realistically as possible, but then often assume that the supporting soil behaves like a bed of linear elastic springs. For routine design, either approach may be sufficiently accurate ? and, in any event, it may be difficult to justify the cost of more rigorous modelling.
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