Salary/stipend: Starting stipend (tax free) per annum is the EPSRC stipend of £13,863
Closing date: Open until filled.

The project:

Based in the Dynamics & Control Group within the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol this is an exciting opportunity to join a strong team participating in a new European Horizon 2020 Transport project entitled: “Flutter Free FLight Envelope eXpansion for ecOnomical Performance improvement (FLEXOP)”.

The FLEXOP project will start in June 2015 and will run for three and a half years. A consortium of 9 partners will participate in the project, including: industrial partners Airbus Group Innovations (Germany and UK), FAAC AG (Austria), INASCO (Greece); research centers SZTAKI (Hungary) and DLR (Germany); and the universities of Bristol (UK), Delft (Netherlands) and Munich (Germany). Its objective is to exploit the coupling between aeroelasticity, flutter and active controls by moving to an integrated design approach of wing aeroelastic tailoring and flight control, enabling significant performance increase of future derivative aircraft. Towards this goal an unmanned demonstrator aircraft (MTOW<150 kg) will be designed and several versions built, each with the same wing shape but different flexible characteristics so as to provide an incremental and safe testing of flutter techniques.

The PhD task will be to investigate bifurcation and robust analysis methods for analysis of aircraft flutter. The aim is to provide an answer to the analysis of flutter in aircraft flexible wings in terms of its onset, effects and critical parameters by means of linear (i.e. structured singular value) and nonlinear (i.e. bifurcation) analysis techniques. You will be in charge of developing the robust analysis models required, studying and applying each of the methods, and investigating possible synergies of the methods to exploit their respective advantages. You will be working with other postgraduate students, post-doctoral researchers and the Faculty members in the University of Bristol FLEXOP team. You will be co-advised by Dr Marcos and Prof. Lowenberg.

How to apply:

Please make an online application for this project at http://www.bris.ac.uk/pg-howtoapply. Please select Aerospace Engineering on the Programme Choice page and enter details of the studentship when prompted in the Funding and Research Details sections of the form

Interviews will be scheduled for April 2015.

Candidate requirements: Applicants should have, or expect at least, a high 2:1-level degree in a relevant engineering or related degree, preferably at the Masters level. Knowledge of robust control and/or nonlinear analysis techniques is preferred. The position is only open to EU citizens and residents due to ESPRC funding.

Funding: This post is offered on a fixed term contract for 3.5 years with starting date of June 2015, or as soon as possible thereafter. Starting stipend (tax free) per annum is the EPSRC stipend of £13,863.

Contacts: Informal enquiries can be made to Dr Andrés Marcos (andres.marcos<στο>bristol.ac.uk) and Prof. Mark Lowenberg (m.lowenberg<στο>bristol.ac.uk).

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