Post Doctoral Research Associate in Computational Solid Mechanics

Durham University

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Less than 3 hours north of London, and an hour and a half south of Edinburgh, County Durham is a region steeped in history and natural beauty. The Durham Dales, including the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, are home to breathtaking scenery and attractions. Durham offers an excellent choice of city, suburban and rural residential locations. The University provides a range of benefits including pension and childcare benefits and the University's Relocation Manager can assist with potential schooling requirements.

The Department

The Department of Engineering is consistently one of the very best UK engineering departments with an outstanding reputation for excellence in teaching, research and employability of our students.  The Department is ranked 4th in the Complete University Guide, 5th in the Guardian University Guide and 6th in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022 in the UK for General Engineering.  Ranked in the top six in the UK for overall profile in REF 2021 (with 95% of publications rated as 4* and 3*), this dynamic Department is an excellent place to work.  The strategic vision for the Department includes a growth plan of over 50% over the next five years, with a significant enhancement of the research challenge portfolio and a drive to enrich our undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research provision.  It is an exciting time to join this expanding Department and make your mark.

Computational Solid Mechanics has been a strength of the Department of Engineering for many years, with strong contributions to the development of methods (e.g. finite elements, boundary elements, meshless methods, etc.) and in application to engineering problems, particularly in geotechnics.  Offshore geotechnics is a key part of the Department’s Research Strategy and two new academic staff were appointed in this area in 2021.  Professors Augarde and Coombs lead an internationally recognised group of researchers developing the Material Point Method for problems involving large deformation, coupled non-linear material behaviour and contact, and have a number of current projects in which the MPM is applied to problems in offshore geotechnics (e.g. ploughing, anchors, cable burial etc.).  If successful in your application you would be joining a growing group of researchers solving fundamental issues in the Material Point Method and build on the success of previously funded research and development.

The Department holds an Athena SWAN Bronze Award, recognising our commitment to diversity in STEM academic and reflecting the supportive and positive environment within the Department.

The Role

This is a computational research project requiring string familiarity with the Material Point Method (MPM) for solid mechanics. This is a simulation technique that has some major advantages over standard finite element (FE) methods (on which it is partly based), primarily the ease of modelling large deformations, making it suitable for problems which continue to challenge FE methods. Since 2014, computational mechanics research at Durham has made major advances in development and application of MPMs for solid mechanics problems, primarily for geotechnical engineering problems. In this area there are many challenges involving large deformations, e.g., slope stability, cutting and ploughing, pile installation and site investigation. The open source Matlab code AMPLE (A Material Point Learning Environment, https://wmcoombs.github.io/), developed by Coombs and hosted at Durham provides an introduction to implicit MPMs and is proving popular with researchers who can use it as a framework in which to build new features and material models. Indeed it forms the basis of a number of current MPM PhD and masters projects at Durham which are exploring new areas such as contact, multiphase materials, higher order continuum theories, damage and biomechanics. The code is also being adapted for the Julia language and explicit variants are being explored.

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computational Solid Mechanics to join Profs Coombs and Augarde to work on Material Point Methods.  A key aim of this project is production of new results for some of the challenging geotechnics problems mentioned above.  The successful applicant will be expected to develop a high performance and heavily featured version of AMPLE, and to then use it to explore a number of offshore geotechnics problems including ploughing, foundation installation and decommissioning. The focus of the project will be implementation and use of MPMs rather than fundamental research into aspects of the methods. The applicant will be expected to work closely with Profs Coombs and Augarde and the research staff and students in the Computational Mechanics Research Node. If successful there will be many opportunities for interaction with industry, presentation at conferences and publications.

Responsibilities: 

• To understand and convey material of a specialist or highly technical nature to the team or group of people through presentations and discussions that leads to the presentation of research papers in conferences and publications.
• To prepare and deliver presentations on research outputs/activities to audiences which may include: research sponsors, academic and non-academic audiences.
• To publish high quality outputs, including papers for submission to peer reviewed journals and papers for presentation at conferences and workshops under the direction of the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder.
• To assist with the development of research objectives and proposals.
• To conduct individual and collaborative research projects under the direction of the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder.
• To work with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and other colleagues in the research group, as appropriate, to identify areas for research, develop new research methods and extend the research portfolio.
• To deal with problems that may affect the achievement of research objectives and deadlines by discussing with the Principal Investigator or Grant-holder and offering creative or innovative solutions.
• To liaise with research colleagues and make internal and external contacts to develop knowledge and understanding to form relationships for future research collaboration.
• To plan and manage own research activity, research resources in collaboration with others and contribute to the planning of research projects.
• To deliver training in research techniques/approaches to peers, visitors and students as appropriate.
• To be involved in student supervision, as appropriate, and assist with the assessment of the knowledge of students.
• To contribute to fostering a collegial and respectful working environment which is inclusive and welcoming and where everyone is treated fairly with dignity and respect.
• To engage in wider citizenship to support the department and wider discipline.
• To engage in continuing professional development by participation in the undergraduate or postgraduate teaching programmes or by membership of departmental committees, etc. and by attending relevant training and development courses.   
• To maintain the research project’s webpages

This post is fixed term for 36 months but may be extendible for a further 24 months depending on the term of Professor Augarde as Head of Department

The post-holder is employed to work on research/a research project which will be led by another colleague. Whilst this means that the post-holder will not be carrying out independent research in his/her own right, the expectation is that they will contribute to the advancement of the project, through the development of their own research ideas/adaptation and development of research protocols.