Scholarship Database

Duration: 42 months starting in October 2010

Supervision: Dr JP Latham, Dr Jiansheng Xiang, Prof Chris Pain, Dr Gerard Gorman, Prof Bassam Izzuddin. Applications are invited for a PhD studentship to join the AMCG (Applied Modelling and Computational Group) in the Department of Earth Science & Engineering.

Background: This £0.91m EPSRC and Industry funded project will help reveal fundamental mechanisms that define the stability or failure of rubble mound coastal structures and breakwaters, using numerical models, transforming the way engineers design. The work includes extending, validating and applying the stress and deformation analysis tools of our world-leading 3D FEMDEM modelling technology, that combines the multi-body particle interaction and motion modelling (i.e. Discrete Element Model, DEM) with the ability to model internal deformation of arbitrary shape (Finite Element Model, FEM). With our FEMDEM simulation tools VGeST.net, we will re-create the construction process, examine inherent heterogeneity of these gigantic granular systems, explore concrete unit shapes, examine scale effects and use vibration and other proxies for wave disturbance, all to study block motion, forces and stresses and the risk of concrete unit breakages. See detailed advertisement and VGeST.net, for coastal structure images.

PhD-B: The project is in code development and would include a contribution to some but not all of the further enhancements that we require, namely inelastic constitutive properties relevant to concrete (where model validation is an essential part), adaptive meshes for our solids model and code parallelisation.

The Candidates: The successful candidate will join and be supported by a dynamic research group with world-class expertise on modelling and coastal structures. The candidate will have the opportunity to develop their career and profile by presenting at international conferences in numerical and applied fields and publishing in high impact journals. Candidates should have a good mathematical background and a degree (or equivalent) in an appropriate field such as earth science, physics, mathematics, computer science or engineering.

For further information please see our website: www.ese.ic.ac.uk. The project is funded by EPSRC who require candidates to have been ‘normally resident’ in the UK for the past three years. The stipend for 2010 – 2011 is £15,590 per annum.  Application forms and instructions of where to send CVs, references etc can be obtained from our website: (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/earthscienceandengineering/courses/phdopportunities/phdapplicationprocedure) or from Ms Samantha Delamaine (E-mail: sam.delamaine@imperial.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 207 594 7339). Further information about the project can be obtained from John-Paul Latham (j.p.latham@imperial.ac.uk).

Interviews are planned for late August and applications are accepted until the posts are filled.

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