PhD student in Structural battery composites analysis and characterization

Join our research team focused on structural battery composite materials. As a PhD student, you will collaborate with experts in computational mechanics, materials science, physics and chemistry. Your responsibility will be to develop computational models within Chalmers' multi-physics computational framework. You will also make structural battery composites and characterise their multifunctional performance using test methods that we develop at Chalmers.

Project description
Your project will be part of the activities on Structural battery composites at Chalmers. Chalmers has pioneered this research for more than one decade. The research is performed in an interdisciplinary team across Chalmers and at our partner universities KTH the Royal Institute of Technology and Imperial College London. Currently, the teams at the three universities comprise approximately 30 people. The project is funded by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The PhD position is for five years, with research training spanning over four years, and an additional year involves teaching.

Batteries in today's electric cars constitute a large part of the vehicles' weight, without fulfilling any load-bearing function. A structural battery, on the other hand, is one that works as both a power source and as part of the structure - for example, in a car body, aircraft interior or laptop casing. This is termed `massless' energy storage, because in essence the battery's weight vanishes when it becomes part of the load-bearing structure. Calculations show that this type of multifunctional battery could greatly reduce the weight of an electric vehicle.

For structural batteries to be useful they must perform their electrical energy storage and supply functions under severe mechanical loads, and vice versa their mechanical integrity must be maintained for all states of charge. Here, we set out to develop fully coupled electro-chemo-thermomechanical models for analysis and design of structural battery composites, as well as in-tandem electrochemical-mechanical tests for model validation and data generation.

The model development will be guided by both experimental data and theoretical principles from composite materials mechanics and electro-chemistry. A computational framework developed within Chalmers' structural battery team will be extended and used to guide further materials development. New experimental methods for characterisation of electrochemical performance of structural battery full cells under tensile loads will also be developed in the project. Material testing and characterisation will be performed in our Composites Laboratory at the Department as well as at Chalmers Material Analysis Lab (CMAL).

The PhD student position will be placed at the Division of Material and Computational Mechanics (Department Industrial and Materials Science). The work will be carried out in close collaboration with researchers at the Division of Materials and Manufacture and the Department of Physics at Chalmers as well as colleagues at KTH the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden and Imperial College London, UK. For more information you find a recent video on massless energy storage - a structural battery with record performance on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB81lkPGGlE.

Major responsibilities
Your major responsibility as a PhD student is to pursue your own doctoral studies related to the project. The major goal of the project is to develop models for coupled eletro-chemo-thermomechancial processes in structural batteries and to develop experimental methods for characterisation of these multifunctional materials under simultaneous electrochemical and mechanical loads. This includes the development of multi-physics material models, experimental procedures, and implementations in a finite element code. The modeling/experimental scope can be adjusted based on the candidate's own interests. You are expected to develop your own scientific concepts and communicate the results of your research verbally and in writing. Your research activities will contribute to enhanced knowledge in the scientific field, in particular by presenting your results in scientific journals and at international conferences.

In addition to the research project, you will also take courses on the advanced level within the Graduate school of Solid and Structural Mechanics. The position also includes teaching courses within Chalmers' undergraduate level, or performing other duties at the department, corresponding to up to 20 percent of working hours

Contract terms
Full-time temporary employment. The position is limited to a maximum of five years.

Application procedure
Learn more and apply here: https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=9784


Application deadline: 3 October, 2021