Research Associate in Offshore Renewable Energy Engineering

Salary range: £36,924 - £45,163

FTE: 1.0

Term: Fixed 24 months

Closing date: 25 February 2025

Specific Skills

The role involves advanced structural design and analysis of offshore renewable energy devices, particularly applied to offshore wind and hydrogen infrastructure structural integrity, including using structural analysis specialist software (e.g. ABAQUS or similar). Responsibilities include risk and structural reliability analysis and optimisation, Non-Destructive Evaluation, and Structural Health Monitoring.

Context

The Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering of the University of Strathclyde is currently leading an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK)-funded project called “Ocean REFuel”. This project integrates a multidisciplinary, world-leading team of researchers from 5 UK universities to design, analyse, and optimise a whole-energy system to maximise ocean renewable energy potential for conversion to zero carbon fuels, with a focus on hydrogen. The project addresses significant questions concerning our energy future:

1. How to maximise ocean energy potential in a safe, affordable, sustainable, and environmentally sensitive manner?
2. How to alleviate the intermittency of the ocean renewable energy resource?
3. How ocean renewable energy can support renewable heat, industrial, and transport demands through vectors other than electricity?
4. How ocean renewable energy can support local, national, and international whole energy systems?

Ocean-REFuel is a large project integrating upstream, transportation, and storage to end-use cases, which will address these questions innovatively over an extended period of time.

Research Associate Role

We are looking for a Research Associate to be integrated into the team working on Work Package 1, which focuses on the upstream processes in the offshore environment, from extracting the renewable energy source and converting it to electricity, to the conversion of electricity into hydrogen, and its storage and transportation to shore. The main research areas are:

1. Offshore structures: design, analysis, and optimisation of a decentralised floating offshore wind turbine equipped with electrolysers.
2. Offshore structures: feasibility assessment, design, and optimisation of an offshore hydrogen storage/buffering system.
3. Assessment and analysis of the best option to transport the hydrogen to shore.

The core methodology is based on the development of a Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis, and Optimisation (MDAO) framework for these innovative offshore platforms, including the main techno-economic objectives and constraints considered when designing an offshore renewable energy device, as well as cross-cutting social and environmental aspects, informed by the results of other work packages. From a technical perspective, the focus is on the aero-hydro-servo-elastic coupled model of dynamics for the design and analysis of floating offshore wind turbines.

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Feargal Brennan at feargal.brennan@strath.ac.uk.

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