About the Project
Among all sources of renewable energy, offshore wind power is going to be an essential field in the world in the near future. It is planned to play an increasingly important role in energy production in the following decades, with an established target of generating nearly 10% of UK’s annual electricity demand in 2020. The dynamic behaviour of these structures is more complicated than for onshore installations, offshore oil and gas industry platforms. This is due to the constant movement of turbine blades, persistent winds and the action of waves. These forces pose new challenges for foundations due to the elevated ratio of lateral to vertical loads, as well as because of the different frequencies of the external loadings. The current design procedures involve extremely simplistic approaches, mainly based on pseudo-static analyses which do not take into consideration many relevant aspects, like the soil degradation due to the repetition of dynamic loading. Such limitations will be overcome in this project, by the accurate analysis of granular soil behaviour taking into account these facts, as well as through the development of a new numerical tool (Finite Element based) able to realistically predict the performance of such infrastructures in the long term, which is currently not possible with the available numerical codes. Since foundations currently represent around 30% of the cost of offshore wind turbines, and they are currently highly overestimated due to the mentioned limitations in their design, this project will allow to save a quite significant amount of money within the next years, when a huge expansion of this field is expected to take place in the UK.
Key responsibilities and outcomes:
- Development of a new constitutive law for granular soil behaviour under dynamic loading, based on Critical State framework.
- Implementation of this new law into a home made, Finite Element code to simulate different types of wind turbine foundations in the long term (of years).
- As a main outcome, we will provide new recommendations of design for the foundations of these infrastructures in the UK, making them cheaper and more reliable.
Studentship Description
A 4 years fully funded (EPSRC) PhD position is now available at UCL, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Soil Mechanics group. This covers stipend (£16296 per year) and fees. You will be working in this vibrant and challenging project while obtaining your PhD at this top university.
Person Specification
- MSc level degree in civil or geotechnical engineering (1st Class).
- Experience of programming languages: C++, Matlab.
- Ability of developing and manipulating FEM software.
- Background knowledge of soil dynamics, linear and non-linear behaviour.
- Experience of using advanced numerical structural analysis packages, Opensees, ABAQUS.
- Ability to work collaboratively and as part of a team.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Eligibility
Applications are invited from UK and EU members. Applicants must meet EPSRC eligibility requirements found here
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/studentships/help/eligibility/
Outstanding non EU students will also be considered.
Start Date
The post in available immediately.
Application Procedure
Applicants should send a covering letter and CV to [Email Address Removed] .
The successful applicant will then have to apply online to UCL by submitting the PhD application form, available from http://www.cege.ucl.ac.uk/Research/Pages/default.aspx and clicking on the Apply now button. Please name Dr Susana Lopez-Querol as the proposed supervisor.
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