Research Associate / Senior Research Associate in Fatigue of Rigid Composite Wing Sails to Decarbonise Maritime Transport

The role

Research Associate/Senior Research Associate with experimental and modelling expertise to join the Bristol Composites Institute to support the Innovate UK AirWing project to design a novel rigid wing sail to decarbonise shipping.

What will you be doing?

‘AirWing maximised thrust wind propulsion demonstration’ is a £3.7M Innovate UK project to develop a novel wind propulsion system for ships to decarbonise maritime transport. AirWing is a partnership between wind propulsion system developer GT Green Technologies, Carisbrooke shipping, and the University of Bristol. The overall aim of the project is to design the AirWing wind propulsion demonstrator and deploy and trial it on board of a ship. For more information about AirWing see: https://www.gtgreentechnologies.com/

You will be based in the Bristol Composites Institute (BCI) in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering (CADE) at the University of Bristol. You will develop new methods to assess the fatigue performance of the novel composite rigid wing wind propulsion system. Challenges to be addressed are:

• The assessment of critical load cases and AirWing structural components based on ship and voyage data, and approaches taken from marine and offshore engineering,
• the design of a subcomponent fatigue test rig,
• conducting subcomponent level static and fatigue tests,
• the application of full-field imaging techniques, such as Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and infrared imaging,
• the integration of experimental and finite element analysis (FEA) data,
• and the analysis and interpretation of results.

Your research will advance the understanding of fatigue in wind propulsion systems for ships, will pave the way to more sustainable maritime trade, and will advance the understanding of integrated subcomponent testing and modelling.

You should apply if

You will have a good honours degree, postgraduate research degree, or doctoral level qualifications in a relevant physical sciences or engineering subject with demonstrable experience in materials and structures testing and analysis.

Preferably, you have experience in composite materials and fatigue, and you have an interest in maritime and offshore engineering.

Please view the Job Description for details.

Additional information

For informal queries please contact Dr Tobias Laux, [email protected] , or through Teams.

To find out more about what it's like to work in the Faculty of Engineering, and how the Faculty supports people to achieve their potential, please see our staff blog:

https://engineeringincludesme.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/

Interviews are anticipated to be held on 8 May 2024.

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