PhD Position on Nuclear Fusion Control Systems available at the Department of Engineering of the University of Sannio in Benevento, Italy
Contacts: Dr. Davide Liuzza (email davide.liuzza@unisannio.it), Prof. Francesco Vasca (email vasca@unisannio.it).
The GRACE (Group for Research on Automcatic Control Engineering) at the University of Sannio offers a PhD position in Real-time control and protection system for ion-cyclotron resonance plasma heating plant in tokamaks.
Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) is a radiofrequency heating and current drive technique to provide huge amounts of power heating to magnetically confined plasma within tokamaks so as to bring it at superhot fusion temperature (around 100M degrees). In order to do so, high power microwaves are injected into the plasma to excite atomic nuclei and transfer heat.
DTT (Divertor Tokamak Test) is a new tokamak under construction in Frascati (Rome, Italy) of 700 M€ of 5.5 MA of plasma current and a total heating power of 45 MW. Within this context, an ICRH plant of 8 MW power is under design.
The DTT project is owned by a consortium of research institutions and big companies. The main partners are the ENEA research centre and the energy company ENI.
The PhD candidate will mainly work on the DTT control system and, in particular, on the control system of the ICRH plant and its interactions and interfaces with the central control system. The control system will comprise both advanced real-time control HW and SW architecture (sampling periods of tents of microseconds, multi-threading real-time computation), advanced SCADA (several thousands variables), real-time data acquisition, fast protection system.
The PhD activity will be organized according the candidate expertise and scientific interests, spanning from real time OS (Linux based, FreeRTOS), Industrial Informatics, Industrial Electronics, Embedded Systems, Real-Time control practice and theory.
The possibility of developing low level control algorithms will also be possible (plasma-antenna coupling control, power deposition control), depending on the status of the project and the PhD candidate interests.
The PhD candidate will also spend a considerable amount of time at the ENEA (Frascati (Rome) Italy) premises and to other relevant tokamaks plants abroad (mainly Europe).
Our ideal candidate has a strong knowledge in embedded systems, real-time control, industrial and automation control, SCADA and PLC, C/C++ programming, Linux environment, Docker and continuous integration tools. Also, a sound knowledge in electronic circuits is required.
Knowledge in FPGA and at least foundations on control systems and PID controllers will be a plus.
We seek for a candidate with an excellent academic track record (both Bachelor and Master degree), well developed analytical and problem solving skills and a strongly motivated personality. Interests in both theoretical research and applications to practical control problems as well as the ability of working independently and in a multidisciplinary team (physics and engineers) complete the candidate profile.
The candidate will be selected according to applicant fulfilment of the above qualifications.
The selected candidate will join a friendly and young team of 7 PhD students, 3 post Docs and 4 Professors with various control expertise (theoretical and applications). The attracting but not distracting environment of the historical town of Benevento is an additional plus.
Interested candidates must send detailed CV and two contacts to whom we can ask references to both the email address: davide.liuzza@unisannio.it, vasca@unisannio.it , preferably by the first half of august.
Answers and interviews invitations (if any) will be notified to shortlisted candidates approximately between mid august and mid September 2023.
