We are seeking a Research Fellow to work on the core research programme of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Supergen Hub. You will be working within the COAST Research Group in the School of Engineering. The role of the Supergen ORE hub is to provide research leadership for the ORE community to enable transformation to future scale ORE. The hub will articulate the vision for the future scale ORE energy landscape, will identify the innovations required and the fundamental research needed to underpin the innovation. It will also generate the pathway for translation of research and innovation into industry practice, for policy adaptation and public awareness in order to support the increased deployment of ORE technologies, reducing energy costs while increasing energy security, reducing CO2 emissions and supporting UK jobs.
You will be working on the part of the core research programme, primarily to identify design load cases and demonstrate the impact of a probabilistic design approach in floating offshore renewable energy systems. Present design methods are inherited from the offshore oil and gas sector, where the design challenge is considerably different to ORE. Floating ORE structures require mooring and anchor systems for each of multiple units and are designed to enhance motion responses in certain conditions, but suppress them in others to ensure survivability and reliability. Design conditions (responses and loads) result from combinations of environmental conditions and hydrodynamics of the structure, each of which are stochastic processes. In the probabilistic design approach, the probability distributions for each of the variables are considered to assess the potential failure of different parts of a complex system. The approach may be used to reduce costs in design of a system with many components, such as a floating structure or device, or with many units, such as an array of structures or devices. This role therefore requires specialist knowledge in probabilistic techniques and preferably offshore renewable energy systems. Experience of physical and numerical modelling of ORE systems is also desirable.
Further details of the desired characteristics for this post can be seen in the job description.
This is a full-time post working 37 hours per week on a fixed-term basis for three years due to funding.
For more information, please contact Professor Deborah Greaves, Head of School of Engineering by telephone 01752 586102 or by emailing Deborah.greaves@plymouth.ac.uk
The University of Plymouth is committed to equality of opportunity, promoting a diverse and inclusive culture, demonstrated through our commitment to the gender equality Athena SWAN Charter and as a Stonewall diversity champion. All applications will be judged solely on merit, however, we particularly welcome applications from groups currently under-represented in the workforce, for example black and minority ethnic groups.
University of Plymouth holds a TEF (Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework) Silver by the Office for Students.
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Job Description