PhD Studentship - Systems Modelling of the Tritium Fuel Cycle

Research theme: Digital Engineering for Fusion Energy

This 4 year PhD is fully funded for home students and students with settled status. Tuition fees will be paid and you will receive a tax free (depending on circumstances) stipend set at the UKRI rate (£19,237 for 2024/25). The start date is 1^st October 2024.

The tritium fuel cycle is a classic Goldilocks problem. Too little tritium restricts power generation and too much tritium leads to increased storage requirements and regulatory issues. The ideal system would be a closed loop, with checks and balances, so that the amount of tritium in each part of the cycle is just right.

In this project, the student will investigate the development of a digital representation of the fuel cycle that combines requirements management, systems modelling, numerical analysis and uncertainty quantification. The output would not only provide a tool for optioneering, but would also help prioritise new avenues for research and serve as a testbed for the design of tritium fuel cycle control systems.

The digital framework will be high level and interactive, allowing the user to get feedback regarding changes to the design of a spherical tokamak, the exhaust system and tritium recovery. The components will be represented as low fidelity building blocks. We will investigate the use of Nvidia Omnigraph, an extensible framework for the drag and drop development of interactive systems using simplified representations of physical objects.

Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2.1 honours degree or a master’s (or international equivalent) in a relevant science or engineering related discipline.

Please contact Prof Lee Margetts before you apply: lee.margetts@manchester.ac.uk

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