Phd Research Fellow in Hydrodynamics of Floating Ocean Renewable Energy Technologies

About:

Western Norway University of Applied Sciences has a vacancy for a Ph.D.-scholarship in Marine Technology. The position is part of the research project "HYDROMORE", financed by the Research Council of Norway, with partners at The University of Manchester (UK), University of Oslo and SINTEF Ocean. The position is for a fixed-term period of 3 years.

The Ph.D candidate will be part of the Wind, Water and Waves research group in the Department of Mechanical and Marine Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Science. Main intended workplace is at campus Bergen. Enrolment onto a qualifying PhD programme may require temporary secondment at one or more of the partnering research institutions.

HYDROMORE seeks to establish new best-practice approaches for designing future mooring systems used in floating ocean renewable energy devices. This will ultimately enable the design of leaner and safer mooring solutions and reduce the cost of energy from these technologies.

A major obstacle to minimise cost of electricity from both floating wind and wave energy, is the mooring system cost. Traditional moorings are heavy and designed using methods suitable for large floating oil rigs, but not for small, dynamic floating wind structures or wave energy converters. Mooring forces are influenced by low-frequency effects, such as slow drift and the interaction of variable wind and wave conditions, coupled with structure response and adaptive control systems. These interactions are not readily assessed using high fidelity methods, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD). As such, there is a knowledge-gap between fast, low-fidelity methods and slow, high-fidelity methods. Hence the design of leaner, more advanced mooring solutions is restricted.

Through four work-packages, HYDROMORE will address this knowledge-gap, to accurately model nonlinear and irregular seas, whilst allowing rapid evaluation of multiple design condition parameters.

The focus of this PhD position will be Experimental validation of linear and nonlinear hydrodynamic modelling.

Formal qualifications:

• A master's degree within one of the disciplines of Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Naval Architecture, or Applied Mathematics. The degree must include specialisation within either Marine Structures, Hydrodynamics or Fluid Mechanics and score an average equivalent grade B on the ECTS grading system.
• Foreign completed degrees (M.Sc.-level) must correspond to a minimum of four years in the Norwegian educational system.
• The master’s thesis must be within one, or preferably several, of the following fields: Hydrodynamics, Marine Hydrodynamics, Marine Structures, or Ocean Renewable Energy.
• The grade for the master's thesis must be equivalent to a minimum of grade B on the ECTS grading system.
• The master’s thesis must demonstrate a significant experimental hydrodynamics testing component.
• An average equivalent ECTS grade C at BSc-level.
• Fluent oral and written communication skills in English language.

The fellowship requires admission onto the University of Oslo PhD programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (or appropriate equivalent). The application to the PhD programme must be submitted no later than two months after taking up the position. For more information see:

http://www.uio.no/english/research/phd/

http://www.mn.uio.no/english/research/phd/

Salary:

• Good occupational pension, insurance and loan schemes from The Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund
• Salaries will be offered at grade 54 (code 1017) in the Civil Service pay grade table scale, currently 501 200 NOK per annum.

For more information on how to apply, please visit here .