Are you holding Master’s degree and looking for fully funded PhD positions? University of Hull, Hull, England invites online application for multiple funded PhD Programs / fully funded PhD positions in various research areas.
Candidates interested in fully funded PhD positions can check the details and may apply as soon as possible. Interested and eligible applicants may submit their online application for PhD programs via the University’s Online Application Portal.
1. Fully Funded PhD Position in Single-turbine scale quantification of wake turbulence
Summary of PhD Program:
Individual wind turbines produce turbulent wakes that have implications for maximum power generation from downwind turbines, increased fatigue loads and associated maintenance costs (Porté-Agel et al., 2020) . There are also associated environmental issues such as noise generation, and the introduction of large-scale flow structures to the atmospheric flow field. There have been a number of studies of these phenomena and Howard et al. (2015) and Kadum et al. (2019) have undertaken detailed studies of aspects of these dynamics. At the heart of this project is an attempt to develop deeper understanding of these phenomena in terms of the flow physics and to provide practical modelling methods that correctly represent these physics.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
2. Fully Funded PhD Position in Parametrising wakes for oceanographic models
Summary of PhD Program:
Oceanographic flow processes are highly sensitive to sea surface boundary conditions (Christiansen et al., 2022), which are in turn critically dependent on atmospheric forcing. Atmospheric flows past offshore wind turbines produce highly turbulent and extensive wakes. These wakes are a necessary result of energy extraction from the wind. They are a key motivation for spatial planning of offshore wind farms where turbine placement is optimised for maximum energy extraction while minimising costs associated with infrastructure and spatial footprint (Giebel et al., 2016). The turbulent wakes propagate downstream, leading to wake-wake interactions and farm-scale atmospheric flow processes with a significantly reduced wind speed in the lee of an offshore wind farm (Platis et al., 2018).
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
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3. Fully Funded PhD Position in Low maintenance reliable main bearings for large wind turbines
Summary of PhD Program:
Almost all the bearings in wind turbine transmissions are rolling element type (1). That includes slow and high-speed shafts, gearbox, blade pitch bearings, and the main bearing that supports the rotor. Wind loading is highly variable and so bearings can operate at changeable speed, high and very variable loading (2). This is a bad place for bearings and there are lots of wear and fatigue failures – design life is 20 years but bearings rarely last that long (3). As machines have got larger, this state has worsened. Manufacturing very large bearings (up to 5m diameter) is expensive and repairing or replacing them very difficult. For example, to replace the main bearing requires the removal of the whole rotor and blades – imagine doing that at sea from a ship mounted crane.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
4. Fully Funded PhD Position in Left in the wake: assessing the impact of sediment mobility in the wake of offshore wind infrastructure
Summary of PhD Program:
Bottom-mounted offshore wind infrastructure increases bed scour and enhances vertical mixing, resulting in elevated suspended sediment concentration (water turbidity) and the generation of sediment plumes. Understanding the distribution and intensity of sediment plumes is critical given the impact of water turbidity on marine ecosystem functions (e.g. May et al., 2003; Ortega et al., 2020). Hence, there is a need to understand the physical processes that enable the extent and concentration of these plumes around man-made infrastructure (e.g. monopiles, cables, bridges and geofluid extraction infrastructure).
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
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5. Fully Funded PhD Position in Impact of “blue space” as a working condition on the health and wellbeing of offshore windfarm workers
Summary of PhD Program:
The offshore wind industry has expanded rapidly and as a large influx of offshore workers is expected to meet the growth of the industry, companies now have an important task of maintaining health and safety at work in order to sustain well-being and retain the workforce until statutory pension. Whilst blue spaces (e.g., coasts, rivers) can play a direct and indirect role in improving health and well-being through reducing stress, depression and anxiety as examples, working at sea can cause feelings of confinement and negatively impact workers’ activity levels and sedentary behaviour, leading to poor health outcomes.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
6. Fully Funded PhD Position in Human-in-the-loop machine learning for drone-assisted Structural Health Monitoring
Summary of PhD Program:
Inspections of offshore wind turbines, such as identifying damage or ice on turbine blades, anticipating its effects and making decisions on maintenance and repair, as well as estimating remaining useful life (RUL), is an important part of extending the lifetime of a wind turbine as well as the power that can be generated from it. While both tasks are often driven by experts, public data on environmental, meteorological or physical conditions, in combination with satellite and / or climate data, can help make predictions for new, unseen conditions.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
7. Fully Funded PhD Position in Digital twins for health monitoring and fault detection in wind generators and converters
Summary of PhD Program:
Reliability is of paramount importance for the offshore wind industry as the cost of maintenance, downtime and repair can markedly affect the business case for adopting new and innovative technologies. To increase availability without increasing maintenance and associated downtime, condition and health monitoring to support fault detection and predictive maintenance are essential in offshore wind. Although many CHM tools are being investigated for the structural elements of a wind generator, little has been done for the electrical generators and power electronics converters which are at the heart of the energy conversion system.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
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8. Fully Funded PhD Position in Data assimilation for wake-wake interactions
Summary of PhD Program:
Large scale wind farms often consist of hundreds of wind turbines with diameters going up to hundreds of metres. The wakes generated by these turbines interact with each other. The accurate modelling of the interaction between the wakes can have significant impact on our ability to optimise the operations of large wind farms and maximise their energy output. Different modeling approaches exist. Semi-analytical wake models offer efficient estimates of key features, while high-fidelity simulations like Large Eddy Simulations (LES) provide detailed 3D turbulence information, often used to understand the underlying physics and calibrate simpler models.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
9. Fully Funded PhD Position in Building psychosocial and physical resilience using self-management skills for offshore workers
Summary of PhD Program:
This multidisciplinary research project is focused on enhancing the resilience of offshore wind industry workers. The research aims to contribute to the physical, psychosocial, and cognitive health of offshore workers by developing and piloting interventions based on self-management and organisational support theories. The successful candidate will collaborate with offshore workers and industry stakeholders to address health challenges, such as stress, fatigue, and musculoskeletal issues, ensuring long-term workforce wellbeing.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
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10. Fully Funded PhD Position in A socio-economic impact evaluation on wellbeing and community dynamics of Offshore Wind Farms in the United Kingdom
Summary of PhD Program:
This research aims to explore the multifaceted effects of offshore wind farms on well-being and community dynamics, considering both intended and unintended consequences. By identifying positive spillover effects—such as enhanced community resilience, belonging, economic opportunities, and increased recreational activities—alongside potential challenges, including habitat shifts and coastal development pressures, this project seeks to offer a comprehensive understanding of these dynamics. To support this analysis, a new dataset will be developed, enabling a deeper exploration of these effects over time. Social cost and benefit analysis of offshore windfarm development will be carried out using non-market monetisation approach by translating wellbeing impacts of such activities into monetary values and revealing trade-offs between money and non-market goods.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
11. Fully Funded PhD Position in Understanding the impacts and benefits of offshore wind on fish in the Greater North Sea
Summary of PhD Program:
This project aims to better understand the long-term temporal impacts and benefits of offshore wind (OSW) on fish distribution and movements across large spatial scales, with a focus on the Greater North Sea region. The novelty of this study lies in drawing together the temporal (past, present and future) and spatial scales (the Greater North Sea), the incorporation of biotelemetry data, and the consideration of both marine and diadromous fishes.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
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12. Fully Funded PhD Position in Understanding the effects of offshore wind development on marine benthic communities
Summary of PhD Program:
This project aims to maximise use of existing data sets provided by offshore windfarm operators, coupled with new, targeted high resolution data collection, to better understand the effects of offshore wind farm development on the structure and function of marine benthic communities. It aims to investigate ecological change with a view to contributing to the understanding of what Marine Net Gain could potentially mean.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
13. Fully Funded PhD Position in Transforming non-recyclable waste into sustainable solutions: Novel anti-corrosion coatings for offshore wind turbines
Summary of PhD Program:
By 2050, it is estimated that the generation of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) will increase to around 4.54 billion tonnes, a 45% increase from 2019. Among MSW, Non-Recyclable Plastic (NRP) waste has been a long-term environmental and economic concern. Landfilling and incineration of NRP waste have several environmental consequences, such as contamination of groundwater and soil, the release of greenhouse gas emissions, microplastics, bisphenols, and phthalates, and resource depletion. This waste management approach represents a missed opportunity for a more sustainable approach to waste management.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
14. Fully Funded PhD Position in SafeML-based Confidence Generation and Explainability for UAV-based Anomality Detection of Blades Surface in Offshore Wind Turbines
Summary of PhD Program:
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) e.g., drones are increasingly used for equipment anomaly and fault detection. When the drones are employed to take images, the quality of the images can be affected by several factors. For instance, images can be blurred due to the relative motion between the blades and the camera mounted on the drones. Noise can be introduced to the images due to the harsh operating conditions of drones. Noise can also be produced by various surrounding electronic devices. As a result, the decision made based on these images could be affected depending on the quality of the images. For this reason, the aim of this project is to propose a methodology to generate confidence in such decision.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
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15. Fully Funded PhD Position in Miniaturising gross proximate composition analysis techniques to develop accurate ecological models of marine species interactions at the scale of offshore windfarms
Summary of PhD Program:
Offshore Windfarms are, and will continue to be, the most significant physical anthropogenic change to the North Sea and will significantly change the seascape and surrounding ecosystems. Currently there is little understanding of these impacts, which is particularly acute for benthic organisms as they have limited habitat mobility and thus likely to be significantly affected by changing sea beds. Benthic organisms are typically small and thus are challenging to study meaning little is known about how their proximate composition changes, this limits our ability to predict how wind farms could affect food chains.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
16. Fully Funded PhD Position in Efficient and Sustainable Offshore Wind Turbine-driven Green Hydrogen production
Summary of PhD Program:
The UK actively supports wind-to-hydrogen projects such as Dolphyn and Gigastack. Polymer electrolyte water electrolysers (PEWEs) are a preferred choice for these projects due to their high efficiency and responsiveness compared to alkaline electrolysers. PEWEs rely on sulfonated fluoropolymer electrolytes such as Nafion, which are high-performance materials with excellent ionic conductivity. However, these electrolytes pose challenges as they are both prohibitively expensive and contain perfluorosulfonic acids, known as “forever chemicals”, with adverse ecological effects due to their persistence in the environment.
Application Deadline: 9 May 2025
17. Fully Funded PhD Position in Conservation Economics: Evaluating Trade-offs in Offshore Wind Farm Development
Summary of PhD Program:
Offshore wind energy offers a promising solution for sustainable and renewable power generation, with the key advantage of not competing for land resources like onshore wind farms. However, the unprecedented spatial squeeze resulting from its expansion presents complex economic, environmental, and social challenges. While it brings long-term benefits, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting marine ecosystem health, it also risks conflicts with existing maritime activities, including fishing, conservation and shipping. A thorough understanding of the socioeconomic and cultural impacts of offshore wind is essential for developing effective mitigation strategies and adaptive management efforts.
