PhD position Digital twins of the power and propulsion system

The SH2IPDRIVE project develops zero emission power and propulsion solutions for ships based on hydrogen in a broad consortium across the Dutch maritime sector, from fleet owner to ship designer and from shipyard to start-up. In this project, Delft University of Technology performs applied and fundamental research into hydrogen storage in liquid organic carriers and metal hydrides, hydrogen bunkering, fuel cell systems, system integration, data collection and safety for ships. The researchers, consisting of 9 PhD positions, one postdoc position and an experienced supervision team of the M&TT and P&E department of the 3ME faculty, develop models, methodologies, algorithms and concept designs for hydrogen power and propulsion systems for ships.

This project focusses on the development of digital twins of the modern power and propulsion systems of ships. These digital twins consist of models of the power and energy distribution systems on board of ships. The energy is supplied by fuel cells. The loads depend on the ship type and consist of propulsion, dynamic positioning, hotel loads, cranes, and dredging processes. In most cases, energy storage in batteries and/or supercapacitors is necessary, because the combustion engines and the fuel cells cannot deliver the dynamic loads required for these applications.

The basic research questions is: How to develop digital twins of the power and propulsion systems in such a way that we can design these systems and predict their dynamic performance?

Subquestions include:

• What are the requirements of these digital twins?
• How can we develop these digital twins and derive the dynamic models of the system components?
• How do we experimentally validate these models?
• How can we use these digital twins to design these power and propulsion systems?
• How can we use them to predict the power system dynamics?
• How can we use them for condition monitoring of the components?

This work will be done in close collaboration with MARIN, where they are modeling, designing and building a zero-emission laboratory.

You will be working in the Marine Engineering group of the Ship Design, Production and Operation section at the Maritime and Transport Technology department. In addition, you will be working closely with other researchers working within MENENS and other related topics and projects at TU Delft partner institutions and companies.