Most Important Topics for GATE

80% of examination questions are asked from 20-30% of your syllabus.

After studying the past trends of GATE papers, our team have listed these 60 topics from the technical subjects of Civil Engineering and here we can ensure that atleast 80% of the questions in the upcoming GATE examination will be from these topics only. So, if you are preparing for GATE and want to score good, check the list given below and also try to cover along with practice questions as much as you can do.

• Environmental Engineering
  Water Treatment- Sedimentation Tank, Design of Filters and Chlorination.
  Quality Parameters- Hardness, Alkalinity and pH.
  Sewage Parameters- Biochemical Oxygen Demand.
  Air Pollution- Pollutants, Plumes and Air pollution Control.
  Sewage Treatment- Activated Sludge Process and Grit Chamber.
• Soil Mechanics
  Soil Properties- e, n, S, w, G, unit weight.
  Permeability of Soil- Darcy Law, Stratified Soil, Laboratory Tests.
  Consolidation- Settlement, Time Factor, e vs stress graph.
  Shear Strength- Mohr-Coulomb Theory, Tri-axial Test.
  Effective Stress- Surcharge, Seepage and Capillarity cases.
  Earth Pressure- Cohesive Soil cases and Rankine's Theory.
  Shallow Foundation- Terzaghi Theory, Plate Load Test and SPT.
  Deep Foundation- Static Method for Load Carrying Capacity and Group Action.
  Seepage- Quick Sand Condition and Applications of Flow Net.
• Transportation Engineering
  Geometric Design- SSD, OSD, Horizontal and Vertical Curves.
  Traffic Engineering- Speed Volume and Density Relation, Headway, Delay, Websters Method and Poisson Distribution.
  Pavement Design- IRC 37 formula, joints and stresses in rigid pavements.
  Pavement Materials- 8 bitumen properties, 6 aggregate properties and Marshall Stability Test.
• Fluid Mechanics
  Open Channel Flow- Most Economical Section, Transitions in Channel, Slope Profiles and Hydraulic Jump.
  Flow Through Pipes- Major and Minor Losses, Pipes in series and Parallel.
  Fluid Dynamics- Venturimeter and Orifice.
  Fluid Properties- Basic Properties, Hydrostatic Pressure and Manometry.
• Hydrology and Irrigation
  Hydrographs- Unit Hydrograph and Conversion.
  Runoff and Infiltration- w and phi index
  Crop Water Requirement- Duty, Delta, Base Period.
  Flood - Muskinghum Method and Statistical Probability Method.
  Precipitation- Missing Rainfall and Thiessen Polygon Method.
  
• Strength of Materials
  Stresses- Normal Stresses, Temperature Stress and Composite Bars.
  Deflection of Beams- Macaulay's Method, Area moment method.
  Principal Stresses- Biaxial normal with shear stresses case only.
  SFD and BMD- Shapes, Maximum and Minimum values of SF and BM.
  Bending Stresses- Flexure Formula
  Shear Stresses- Variation and Maximum Values.
  Torsion of Shafts- Shafts in series and parallel.
• Theory of Structures
  Degree of Indeterminacy
  Truss Analysis- Method of Sections and Method of Joints.
  Analysis- Moment Distribution Method and Slope Deflection Method.
• Surveying
  Levelling- Rise and Fall, HI Method, Sensitivity questions.
  Compass- WCB and QB, included angles.
  Traversing- Closing errors and Corrections.
  Photogrammetry.
• Reinforced Cement Concrete Structures
  Prestress Concrete- Maximum and Minimum Stresses, Losses of Prestress.
  Beams- Singly Reinforced and Doubly Reinforced, Specifications.
  Shear Design
  Material Properties- Specifications and Formulae.
• Steel Structures
  Rivets and Bolts- Rivet Value and Number of Rivets.
  Welded Connections- Eccentric Loading.
  Plastic Analysis- Formation of Mechanisms.
  Tension Members- Net Area Calculations
• CPM PERT and Construction Materials
  Network Analysis.
  Cement and Concrete.
  Steel Properties.

Try to cover all the above topics by basics and solve previous questions related to these topics also. To boost your preparation, you can also join our GATE course for Civil Engineering.