The Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Thessaly was founded in 1993 and, after twenty years of continuous efforts, it has succeeded to establish its position among the Greek Civil Engineering departments. Despite the initial difficulties, the Department has succeeded to attract active researchers and experienced engineers that formed its academic staff. Despite the heavy teaching program and the burden of organizational and administrative duties, the faculty has also succeeded to promote research, mainly through the supervision of high quality doctoral theses but also through intense collaboration with graduate and postgraduate students. The above research efforts resulted in a large number of publications in international journals and conference proceedings. After twenty years of efforts, the Department faculty decided to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Department by organizing activities that could potentially strengthen its visibility. Following these lines, the present Volume has as a target the dissemination of the research work that has been produced in the Department during the last few years. The preparations lasted more than nine months and were supported by an ad-hoc Steering Committee. The faculty of the Department, PhD students, research collaborators and former adjunct professors and lecturers were invited to contribute, with works representative of the research that has been produced within the Department. Finally, 35 papers were collected that reflect the research in all the major fields of Civil engineering. In order to assist the readers, the Volume has been organized in five parts. The first part contains 14 papers dealing with subjects of Structural Engineering and Mechanics. The second part contains 10 papers reflecting the research in the field of Fluid Mechanics and Water Resources Engineering. The third part contains 5 papers with advances in Geotechnical Engineering and the fourth part contains 5 papers summarizing the research in the field of Transportation and Traffic Engineering. Finally, the fifth part contains contributions in general topics. We believe that through the present Volume the interested reader can form an idea of the research that is being conducted in the Department and to outline its scientific profile. We would like to thank the members of the Steering Committee who contributed with ideas about the nature and format of the present Volume and all the authors who promptly responded to our invitation.