Control and Isolation of Low Level Vibrations in Civil Engineering Structures - ENG- PhD (Funded)

Location: Streatham Campus, University of Exeter, EX4 4QJ

Project Description:
State-of-the-art scientific and manufacturing facilities often require extremely low levels of environmental vibration to achieve their best performance. Sources of structural vibration both internal and external to the building in which they are located can adversely affect the quality of measurements or products produced. A satisfactory vibration environment is often achieved through massive foundations or application of sophisticated vibration isolation measures. In some cases this is not enough and problems of quality degradation can still result from excessive vibrations.

This PhD studentship is intended to explore methods of feedback vibration control that can be applied to guarantee a high quality vibration environment for extremely vibration-sensitive items of instrumentation and manufacturing equipment. Sources of vibration both internal and external to a building will be considered. This will extend past work by our research group, which has focused primarily on human response to vibration and application of vibration control technologies to ensure human comfort. Novel methods of actuation of civil engineering structures will need to be considered as an alternative to existing use of inertial actuators.

The Vibration Engineering Section (VES) at University of Exeter has extensive laboratory and field testing experimental facilities, which have been significantly upgraded in the last three years through extensive investment by the University. This includes a range of actuators, sensors and data acquisition and control systems that are suitable for use in this research project. In addition, VES has state-of-the-art analytical facilities, including FE codes, numerical analysis and control simulation. Hence, it is expected that this research project would involve sophisticated analytical development and numerical simulations backed up by laboratory and field experimental work.

The successful candidate ideally will have a background in structural vibration and/or control systems, preferably with knowledge of vibration transmission and technologies for vibration mitigation.

Please follow this link for more information: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/studying/funding/award/?id=2462