Ph.D. student Position – MISCEA thesis offer ESR01 – LES Windturbines

A priori predictions of the potential of wind turbine farms are needed to assess their efficiency and profitability. For large farms made up of several tens of turbines, the uncertainty of these estimations is largely due to the modeling of the losses through the wakes which are often beyond 10% of the potential power. In addition to these losses, blockage effects which could lead to additional losses are not taken into account in standard engineering predictions. These blockage effects are up to now not well understood and are the topic of several experimental and numerical research works.

The turbulent wind evolution along very long periods representative of the farm’s lifetime (around twenty years) is needed to estimate the potential power of wind turbines and leads to hundreds if not thousands of numerical simulations of the flow through the farms. This requires numerical tools easy to configure and allowing very fast computations. Considering the financial stakes, it is still very important to assess the performances of these fast tools and to improve them with reference data. The available experimental or on-site data being very scarce, carrying out reference fine computations is then mandatory.

The use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) is spreading among the “wind turbines” community since ten to fifteen years.  The RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes) approach which consists in solving the Reynolds averaged flow quantities (velocity, pressure, temperature, …) is still widely used among the industrial actors. These latter often use additional hypotheses to simplify the problem (such as by linearizing the equations) due to the aforementioned large computational costs. On the other hand, the academia community performs progressively more and more LES (Large Eddy Simulation) computations, in addition to RANS approaches. This is due to the fact that RANS results strongly depend on the closures which are used (linear eddy viscosity, non-linear eddy viscosity, Reynolds stresses, …) and the information provided by these computations are intrinsically limited as the physics of wind turbines is strongly unsteady either for the boundary conditions or the flow through the farm.

DNS (Direct Numerical Simulation) in which Navier-Stokes and energy equations are solved directly without any model would have been ideal but require huge computations which are still not feasible today considering the high involved Reynolds numbers. LES, in which the large space and time scales are solved and for which the dissipation due to the small scales is modeled through a subgrid scale of tensor or vector, is a good compromise between precision and cost. It allows to have finer and richer details of the flow than with RANS approaches and the computations are long but feasible today allowing to obtain reference data for few predefined meteorological situations.

Requirements

Research FieldMathematics » Computational mathematicsEducation LevelMaster Degree or equivalent

Skills/Qualifications

Programmation en C, C++, Fortan, Python / C, C++, Fortran, Python programmingLanguagesENGLISHLevelExcellent

Additional Information

Eligibility criteria

Description of the project and the candidates’ eligibility criteria:

This position will be part of the EU-funded project MISCEA, which is an ambitious inter- and multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Network under the Horizon-Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. 

PhD candidates’ can be of any nationality but you have to meet these eligibility criteria:

• Not being a current employee working at ENPC.
• Not having resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc) in France for more than 12 months during the past 36 months immediately before the deadline of the MISCEA Programme’s call. Compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays and time spent as part of a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention are not taken into account.
• Holding a Master’s degree (or about to obtain one) or having a University degree equivalent to a European Master’s degree (5-year duration) at the deadline of the MISCEA Programme’s call.
• Researchers must be doctoral candidates, i.e. not already in possession of a doctoral degree at the deadline of the co-funded programme’s call. Researchers who have successfully defended their doctoral thesis but who have not yet formally been awarded the doctoral degree will NOT be considered eligible.
• Signing a declaration of the veracity of the information provided (Declaration of honour, free of form).

If you comply with the eligibility criteria and you wish to submit your application, you must:

• Contact the thesis supervisor and explain your thesis project to her/him so that she/he validates your application via a letter of acceptance.
• Submit a 5-pages thesis proposal under the proposed research areas, with the agreement of the future supervisor + 1 page cover letter with: the relevance of your educational/professional background to carry out your thesis topic. 
• The applicant will have to complete an ethics checklist based on ethics guidance from the HorizonEurope programme guide.
• English-translated transcripts from the master’s degree or equivalent.
• Any specific requirements of the Doctoral School corresponding to the targeted MISCEA fellowship offer.
• English curriculum vitae, including information about the level on English language knowledge.
• One letter of reference, at least.

See mandatory templates for your application and recruitment conditions on the Applicant’s guide on the MISCEA website (link).

Then your candidature is complete, please send inquiries to miscea-program@enpc.fr

Additional comments

The present offer of a doctoral contract in France is for a period of three years.

Full-Time employment : estimated monthly brut salary : ~2700euros (estimated monthly net salary before income taxes: ~2100euros)
 Website for additional job details