Vacancies

Challenge: Develop fundamental knowledge on fluid dynamics in sports.

Change: Apply new knowledge on fluid physics to practice.

Impact: Increase performance of the sport athletes. 

Job description

The fluid dynamics group (Dept. of Process & Energy) at the faculty of Mechanical, Maritime, Materials Engineering (3mE) is looking for a new colleague who shares our passion and enthusiasm for research and engineering in the field of sports.

This position focuses on the fluid dynamics in mainly rowing, swimming and sailing. The aim of the program is to develop fundamental knowledge on specified topics and to translate the physics of fluids to practice, in order to increase the performance of the sport athletes.

The team is open-minded in which you are able to exchange your knowledge and ideas. There is close collaboration with the national sport federations and NOC-NSF to gain insight into drag reduction, propulsive power, optimal use of existing materials and products and the influence of environmental flow. For example, among others, the unsteady flow around a blade (rowing), a hydrofoil (sailing) and a hand (swimming) are very complex which are still not yet fully understood.

The work within this program is multi-disciplinary and involves experimental research and engineering with support of internal and external specialists (scientific/non-scientific). An extensive lab equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment are widely available.

You have the opportunity to coach BSc and MSc students and supervise their projects. As a PhD candidate, you will receive training you need to develop yourself on multiple areas. As a Postdoc candidate, you will have the opportunity to prepare yourself for an academic career, with the associated responsibilities for education, project coordination and the formulation of project proposals.
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Are you interested in survivable DC systems for ships and their integration into the ship power propulsion and energy system?

Job description

Energy transition, smart manning, and survivability are three of the main challenges of the Navy and the rest of the maritime sector. The NWO project "Survivable DC Systems for Ships" investigates DC system technology that enables integration of energy from renewable sources, and makes it possible to continue operation after failures from wear, calamities such as fires and floods, or missile impact, by being fault tolerant. This project aims to answer the following research questions. First, how to design meshed DC system architectures, components, and protection for vessels in such a way that survivability is maximized? Secondly, how can reliability of the DC system and its components be modelled in such a way that performance can be guaranteed? Thirdly, how to design and control fault tolerant decentralized DC energy systems, and how to integrate them into the ship design? Fourthly, is it viable to replace a part of the DC system conductors by superconductors; what are the benefits of these superconductors and in which parts of the power system should they be applied? TUDelft, TUEindhoven and UTwente are collaborating in this project.

This vacancy focusses on the third research question: how to design and control a decentralized energy system both in normal operation and in the case of extreme events? How can energy sources and loads be distributed over the vessel to ensure safety, reliability, availability, and efficiency? And what are the implications of this DC system architecture for the ship design? Can we get rid of switchboards? Extreme events include electromagnetic guns or laser weapons requiring extremely high power for a very short time and consequences of missile impacts, such of compartment flooding or fire.

The candidate will be working in the Marine Engineering group of the Ship Design, Production and Operation section at the Maritime and Transport Technology department of Delft University of Technolgoy. In addition, he/she will be working closely with other researchers working within other projects at TUDelft dealing with energy transition in the maritime sector. Furthermore, this research will be carried out in close collaboration with a user committee with representatives from the Navy, industrial partners and other research institutes. Read more.

Job description

As the impact of global warming on extreme weather events, including droughts, heat waves, unhealthy pollution levels, as well as storms and extreme precipitation, are presenting themselves already, there is an increasing need to understand and predict extreme events as a result of global climate change.  This is especially relevant for urban areas where most of the planet’s population now lives and where extreme events can be even more severe, both in intensity and in impact, e.g., urban heat island effects, dispersion of pollution, and flooding.

Thanks to the continuous increase of computing power and progress in the development of efficient numerical methods, highly-resolved simulations of the flow in the local microclimates are becoming feasible. This can enable us to ultimately build digital twins that will help us to assessing the effectiveness of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. In this position, you will work on the forefront of this topic, in a team with long-standing expertise in highly-resolved numerical simulations, wall-bounded turbulence, and atmospheric dynamics.

We will use a highly-performing numerical tool for massively-parallel, obstacle-resolving  simulations of fluid flows on many-GPUs/CPUs. As a first step, we will focus on fundamental studies on simpler geometries using Direct Numerical Simulations of forced convective turbulence over rough surfaces. The insights from this effort will then be used to upscale our system towards larger and more realistic systems, and a complete urban microclimate model where equations of thermal energy (including radiative heat transfer), humidity, and pollutants, are solved over complex surface topologies.

This PhD position is based in the Process & Energy Department of the Faculty of Mechanical, Materials, and Maritime Engineering (3ME). The effort will be highly integrated, framed within the TU Delft Climate Action Program, and in very close collaboration with the Atmospheric Modelling group in the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CiTG). Read more. 

Job description

Design and optimization of next generation of heat exchangers has to rely on accurate measurement of the local and global variables including temperature, velocity, heat transfer rate, and pressure drop. Such measurements have to be conducted across different length and time scales to acquire reliable information required to design and optimize a heat exchanger.
Different measurement techniques are available but there is the need to develop new ones and/or combine the existing ones to conduct lab- and full- scale measurements under different operating conditions. 
New fundamental methods and breakthroughs in heat exchanger design and optimization with applications in heat transformation, renewable energy systems, thermal energy storage, and waste heat recovery which can reduce our carbon footprint for a more sustainable future.

The Department of Process and Energy (P&E) of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands, announces an open position for a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in the broad field of Experimental Heat Transfer. Read more.

Job description

The potential for waste heat recovery in Europe is staggering. Waste heat recovery increases the energy efficiency and reduces CO2 emissions of energy intensive industries. In our intertwined renewable electricity and heat market, the use of heat pumps at high temperatures lends itself well to facilitate our energy transition. This project aims at investigating new design concepts for high temperature heat pumps for instance using novel refrigerants (or mixtures). The project looks into a combined design, test, control and operation strategy taking into account the intermittent nature of both the supply and demand side. The work entails experimental, numerical and theoretical activities. Demonstrated prior knowledge/experience is desirable. 

Requirements

Applicants must meet the TU Delft Graduate School requirements. The successful applicant is expected to work in a multidisciplinary team. Prior knowledge of thermodynamics and heat transfer is a must. 

Doing a PhD at TU Delft requires English proficiency at a certain level to ensure that the candidate is able to communicate and interact well, participate in English-taught Doctoral Education courses, and write scientific articles and a final thesis. For more details please check the Graduate Schools Admission Requirements.

Conditions of employment

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met.

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from € 2541 per month in the first year to € 3247 in the fourth year. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills.

The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance and sport memberships, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. For international applicants we offer the Coming to Delft Service and Partner Career Advice to assist you with your relocation. Read more.

Intensify the production of green hydrogen with magnetic fields and pulsed electrolysis.

Job description

Green hydrogen from water electrolysis is becoming an important ingredient in realizing the energy transition, by storing large amounts of intermittent electricity and as a base chemical. However, hydrogen from water electrolysis is still too expensive to compete against the hydrogen from fossil based sources, which is slowing down the energy transition. The cost of green hydrogen production has to be reduced strongly in the coming years, to enable an economically sustainable energy transition. Therefore, your help is needed in developing the required innovations to improve the efficiency of electrolysis and to reduce the capital costs of electrolyzer systems.  

Energy losses associated with reaction kinetics and gas-bubble evolution are some of the most important losses in an electrolyzer and directly impact the cost of green hydrogen. Suppressing these losses are of significant research interest and recent efforts have shown some innovative ways to do so. It was shown that the electrical resistances due to gas bubbles and those associated with reaction kinetics, are sensitive to the application of magnetic fields and to the use of time-varying voltages. Very high frequency voltage oscillations have shown to improve the reaction rates multi-fold, while low frequency spatially varying patterns can promote the release of bubbles. In addition, magnetic fields have also been proven to aid bubble removal as well as improve reaction rates.

However, further understanding of these concepts are required to harvest their full potential and to successfully scale them up. Through this project, you will develop an in-depth understanding of these two concepts from a system perspective and evaluate their potential for scale-up. You will work closely with HyET E-Trol B.V. on this project. HyET E-Trol is the industrial partner sponsoring this project.

Requirements

• You are a self-motivated conscientious researcher (f/m) with good communication and self-management skills;
• You have a PhD degree in an engineering discipline or a PhD in an applied science with additional engineering experience;
• Knowledge of alkaline/AEM water electrolysis will be a plus;
• Experience with electrochemical measurement techniques will also be beneficial.

Conditions of employment

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities. You'll be a offered a fulltime contract with a duration of 2 years, in scale 10, with a minimum of € 2.960 and a maximum of € 4.670 gross per month. These figures are based on a full time position. Read more.