PDRA in Offshore Renewable Energy Engineering: Advanced Structural Design and Analysis 638303

Faculty of Engineering

Are you ready to dive into the future of ocean energy? Join the University of Strathclyde's cutting-edge "Ocean REFuel" project"!

As a Research Associate on our elite team, you'll be at the forefront of revolutionizing offshore wind technology. Imagine designing floating wind turbines with built-in electrolysers.

FTE: 1.0

Term: Fixed 24 months

SPECIFIC SKILLS

The role involves advanced structural design and analysis of offshore renewable energy devices, in particular applied to offshore wind and hydrogen infrastructure structural integrity and including using structural analysis specialist software (e.g. ABAQUS or similar). Risk and structural reliability analysis and optimisation, Non-Destructive Evaluation, Structural Health Monitoring.

CONTEXT

The Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering of the University of Strathclyde is currently leading an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK)funded project the research flagship programme called “Ocean REFuel”. The Ocean-REFuel project brings together a multidisciplinary, world-leading team of researchers from 5 UK universities to design, analyse, and optimise a whole-energy system to maximise ocean renewable energy (Offshore Wind and Marine Renewable Energy) potential for conversion to zero carbon fuels, focusing on hydrogen. The project has transformative ambition addressing a number of big questions concerning our Energy future:

• How to maximise ocean energy potential in a safe, affordable, sustainable and environmentally sensitive manner?
• How to alleviate the intermittency of the ocean renewable energy resource?
• How ocean renewable energy can support renewable heat, industrial and transport demands through vectors other than electricity?
• How ocean renewable energy can support local, national and international whole energy systems?

Ocean-REFuel is a large project integrating upstream, transportation and storage to end use cases which will over an extended period of time address these questions in an innovative manner developing an understanding of the multiple criteria involved and their interactions.

We are looking for a Research Associate that will be integrated in the team working on work package 1, which focuses on the upstream processes in the offshore environment, from extracting the renewable energy source and converting it to electricity, to the conversion of electricity into Hydrogen, to its storage and transportation to shore. The main research areas are:

• Offshore structures: design, analysis and optimisation of a decentralised floating offshore wind turbine equipped with electrolysers
• Offshore structures: feasibility assessment, design and optimisation of an offshore hydrogen storage/buffering system
• Assessment and analysis of the best option to transport the hydrogen to shore

The core of the methodology is based on the development of a Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis, and Optimisation (MDAO) framework for these innovative offshore platforms, not only including the main tecno-economic objectives and constraints considered when designing an offshore renewable energy device, but also considering the cross-cutting social and environmental aspects, fed by the other work packages’ results. From a technical point of view, the focus is on aero-hydro-servo-elastic coupled model of dynamics to the design and analysis of floating offshore wind turbines.

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Feargal Brennan, feargal.brennan@strath.ac.uk

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