Superconducting cable for energy applications

Superconducting cables are an emerging and attractive technology for electrical power applications due to significant developments of high-temperature superconductors in the past decade. What makes superconducting cables highly desirable for electricity transportation are their high current density and low energy loss.

An enthusiastic PhD student is invited to join the Applied Superconductivity Group to conduct research in the design, modelling and testing of superconducting cables for electricity grid and aircraft propulsion machine applications. Specific applications to be investigated will include underground cable for metropolitan city applications, offshore HVDC cable for wind farm connections, high current cable for fusion tokamak magnet applications and low loss cable for aircraft propulsion applications. Depending on the application selected, thestudent will have chance to work with superconductor manufacturers, electricity grid operators, fusion magnet manufacturers or aircraft manufacturers throughout the PhD project.

The student will get access to Strathclyde’s recently established state-of-art Applied Superconductivity Lab facility which includes various low temperature cryostat (10K-77K), high power supplies (up to 50kW), high precision measurement systems and access to real-time digital simulators via hardware-in-the-loop facility. The student will work in a collegiate and friend team within the Applied Superconductivity Group which now has 15 members including 1 Professor, 1 Reader and 1 Marie-Cure Fellow. The group has been pioneering in developing advanced numerical models for HTS devices and fully HTS machines for electric propulsion with the support from EPSRC, RAEng and H2020 since 2012. The group members have sit on editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity and management board of International HTS modelling group. In the past 5 years, the group members have won various prestigious prizes including the Jan Evetts SUST Award 2019/2017 and the IEEE Van Duzer Prize 2014. More details can be found at https://pureportal.strath.ac.uk/en/persons/weijia-yuan and https://pureportal.strath.ac.uk/en/persons/min-zhang

The Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering in Strathclyde is ranked among top 100 in the world according to the latest Shanghai ranking (http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings/electrical-electronic-engineering.html). The student will be part of the Institute for Energy and Environment (InstEE) at the University of Strathclyde which has established an international reputation in electrical power engineering research https://www.strath.ac.uk/research/subjects/electronicelectricalengineering/instituteforenergyenvironment/ . It operates within the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and hosts over 270 researchers in state-of-the-art facilities including the Technology and Innovation Centre and the Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC) https://www.strath.ac.uk/research/powernetworksdemonstrationcentre/ . The latter offers an HV/LV MW-scale power networks test bed for industry-scale systems testing. These facilities are utilised by a significant number of industrial partnerships and programmes, including the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Electrical Power Systems.

The candidate is expected to have a first class master level degree in relevant subject which includes but are not limited to Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, Physics, etc. Applicant with experimentals experience and publication records in power electronics, power systems, electrical machines and electro-magnetics are particularly welcome. The candidate is expected to provide three independent references. The project is expected to start from October 2020.