This PhD position is focused on the data-driven identification and control of hydrodynamically coupled floating structures. The position will be both within the Process & Energy department and the Delft Center for Systems and Control of the TU Delft 3me faculty.
Position description
Future challenges in sustainability increasingly require floating structures to operate in proximity to one another. Offshore wind farms, wave energy converter arrays, and maneuvering ship convoys all involve hydrodynamically coupled systems of multiple floating structures. The flow around each structure produces an unsteady wake that can impact neighboring structures, and cause force and kinematic fluctuations. These interactions may reduce operational efficiency, induce fatigue loading and thus maintenance costs, and can even lead to system failure.
The PhD project will develop methods for the identification of such dynamic interactions and the design of controllers that mitigate the force fluctuations on hydrodynamically interacting structures. The ultimate goal is to leverage these results to develop harm-minimization strategies that prevent the potentially deleterious effects of such wake-structure interactions.
The identification of the hydrodynamically coupled system will be based on the generation and analysis of experimental data, using a unique unsteady flows facility that combines advanced flow diagnostic methods with industrial robotics hardware. This project will leverage data-reduction tools such as the dynamic mode decomposition to build a system model from the experimental data. The goal is to identify system models which are both physically interpretable and generalizable and are appropriate for the design of controllers that mitigate the unsteady loads on the hydrodynamically coupled structures. The approach will build on optimization-based control methods like model predictive control.
Additional information
More information about this position and the application procedure can be found at this link.
For any questions, please contact Dr. Abel-John Buchner (A.J.Buchner@tudelft.nl) or Dr. Dimitris Boskos (d.boskos@tudelft.nl).
