PhD student position in applied mechanics

The Division of Dynamics at the Department of Applied Mechanics is seeking a new PhD student to start at the earliest 16st of September, 2013. The research will be conducted on the project “Ice detection for smart de-icing of wind turbines” funded by the Energimyndigheten – the Swedish Energy Agency. It is foreseen close interaction of the project with the activities of the Department of Applied Mechanics in the Swedish Wind Power Technology Centre (SWPTC), http://www.chalmers.se/ee/swptc-en/.

Major responsibilities
A modern trend is to build wind farms in areas with cold climates. Wind turbines operating in cold climates or at high altitudes are facing icing conditions. The icing of a wind turbine rotor blade can lead to several problems: significant power losses (up to 50%), measurement errors, fatigue of materials and components, mechanical failures and electrical faults, safety hazard. Due to above a great need for operation of wind turbines in cold climate is to accurately measure the presence and amount of ice in several places along turbine blades.

Existing methods for detecting ice are e.g. based on the analysis of production data and/or analysis of weather conditions, based on inductance, impedance or capacitance change, or an infrared spectroscopy. All these methods have some advantages as well as disadvantages. For smart reliable and energy efficient de-icing systems several parameters of ice and icing of a rotor blade are needed: ice density, thickness and mass, ice location, bulk modulus, viscosity, others. The listed parameters are needed to devise measures for de-icing. But efficient methods to directly detect ice build-up on wind turbine blades and to determine ice parameters are lacking. It should be also emphasized that the development of well-functioning ice measurement tools and techniques is a prerequisite for evaluating and improving the rotor blade icing modeling and simulations in terms of the parameters described above. The ice detection, measurements of icing and effective de-icing are the utmost importance problems for wind turbine industry in cold climates. It is likely that the smart de-icing systems for wind turbines will be the hybrid systems based on integration of thermal, acoustical and optical technologies.

The proposed project aims to develop theoretical background, methods and algorithms for novel integrated acoustic waves and laser (AWL) based technology for ice detection enable smart de-icing of wind turbine rotor blades. Despite significant research efforts there is still a lack of fundamental knowledge on modelling of ice and icing phenomenon with application to ice detection and de-icing of wind turbine rotor blades. To enhanced knowledge in this field Your research will be focused on modelling and simulation of acoustic wave propagation in multi-layer and composite structures used in design of wind turbine rotor blades. The developed mathematical and computational models must be validated by experimental data and will constitute the basis for creating an integrated ice detection sensor technology. Physical prototype of the integrated AWL based sensor system will be develop and tested. The work is planned as PhD project at CHALMERS in cooperation with the Chalmers Industriteknink, http://www.cit.chalmers.se/en and WindVector AB, http://windvector.se/ . The expected results should be used to optimize performance of de-icing systems and in this way will increase cost efficiency of wind turbine operation in cold climate. Cooperation with end-users is also foreseen.

Qualifications
A suitable background is a Master of Science (Swedish: civilingenjör) in mechanical engineering, engineering physics or civil engineering with emphasis on structural dynamics, acoustic wave propagation, composite mechanics, and computational mechanics. A strong interest in mathematical modeling and computer simulation is required. The ability to work with experimental set-up, sensors and data acquisition systems, measurement data processing and analysis is valued.

Knowledge of the Swedish language is desirable but not a requirement. Since communication of research results is a central part of the work, communicative skills in English (oral as well as in writing) are vital. Furthermore, it will also be expected that you can take on responsibility, take own initiatives and work independently when needed. At the same time it is important that you are good at working in teams.

If Swedish is not your native language, you should be able to teach in Swedish after two years. Chalmers offers Swedish courses.

To qualify as a PhD student, you must have a master's level degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits in a relevant field.

Application deadline: 2013-09-01

For questions, please contact:
Professor Viktor Berbyuk
Phone: +46-31-772 1516
E-mail: viktor.berbyuk@chalmers.se

Professor Anders Boström
Phone: +46-31-772 1526
E-mail: anders.bostrom@chalmers.se



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