Doktorand inom thermal control and fault prognosis for Li-ion batteries

This PhD position gives a unique possibility to reach specialist competence in Automatic Control as well as in battery research, two fields with very strong job markets also in the foreseeable future. The project involves both theoretical in-depth work as well as application oriented and experimental work, with collaboration with specialists at the involved companies. Perhaps most important, though, is that the project contribute to fasten the transition to a fossil-free transport system and reduce the use of natural resources on a large scale. As a PhD student you will be academically and pedagogically trained to teach and enter a strong international research environment and network.

Information about the research/the project/the division
The position is with the Automatic Control group in the division of Systems and Control. Aiming for sustainable solutions, the group is involved in many research projects on energy savings using automatic control methods. In general, the projects are carried out in collaboration with other research groups, institutes and industry.

The interest and use of battery based electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, are steadily increasing and they are gradually replacing the traditional combustion engine based vehicles due to environmental concern and legislation. However, batteries are plagued by potential risks of thermal runaway, which is often associated with fire and even explosion. The traffic accidents induced by thermal runaway have turned out to be catastrophic to the vehicle, passengers, and surrounding life and property. Meanwhile, thermal dynamics heavily impact battery performance and degradation. Accordingly, there is a global urgency to develop battery management technologies that regulate battery temperature for the best performance and long lifetime, without triggering thermal safety issues. Current research has been focused on studies of the heat propagation after initiating the runaway by external abuse or deliberately adding deficiency into the cell. However, the former represents a poor emulation of internal short circuits, and the latter has no build-up of a changed thermal behaviour.

This project aims at addressing thermal failure and mitigation strategies by on-road monitoring and active manipulation of the actual behaviours inside the battery, and by exploring the use of cloud and fleet data for reference, rather than post-mortem analysis of thermal behaviours. This will involve the development of physical models to predict distributed temperature and electrochemical behaviour in each battery cell, module and pack. The other aim of the project is to derive a method to optimize the cooling system design in combination with optimized control, potentially leading to significant performance improvements of the batteries.

The project is a collaboration with the companies VOLVO GROUP and SCANIA. The position is for four years of PhD studies extended up to five years to accommodate teaching performed at the department.

Major responsibilities
Your major responsibility is to pursue research in line with the project, publish and present scientific articles and take part in discussions. You will also be expected to participate in teaching activities in the field of Automatic Control.

Position summary
The position will be a full-time temporary employment with funding from the Swedish Electromobility Centre and Swedish Energy Agency. The position is limited to a maximum of five years.

Qualifications
To qualify as a PhD student, you must have a master's level degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits in control, signal processing, applied mathematics or power electronics, or equivalent. If you have previous experience of battery research we will consider this a merit. 

The position requires sound verbal and written communication skills in English. Swedish is not a requirement but if you have an interest in learning Swedish, Chalmers offers Swedish courses.

Our offer to you
Read more about working at Chalmers and our benefits for employees.

Application procedure
The application should be marked with Ref 20200170 and written in English. The application should be sent electronically and be attached as pdf-files, as below:

CV: (Please name the document: CV, Family name, Ref. number)
• CV
• Other, for example previous employments or leadership qualifications and positions of trust.
• Two references that we can contact.

Personal letter: (Please name the document as: Personal letter, Family name, Ref. number)
1-3 pages where you:
• Introduce yourself
• Describe your previous research fields and main research results
• Describe your future goals and future research focus

Other documents:
• Copies of bachelor and/or master’s thesis.
• Attested copies and transcripts of completed education, grades and other certificates, eg. TOEFL test results.

The files may be compressed (zipped).

Application deadline: 15th of May - 2020

For questions, please contact:
Assistant Professor Changfu Zou, Department of Electrical Engineering,
changfu@chalmers.se
+46 31 772 3392

Professor Torsten Wik, E2 Department of Electrical Engineering,
tw@chalmers.se 
+46 31 772 5146