Current research degree projects
Explore our current postgraduate research degree and PhD opportunities.
Explore our current postgraduate research degree and PhD opportunities.
There is an ongoing transformation in engineering autonomous systems that aim to achieve complex objectives with limited human intervention in applications such as robotics, self-driving cars, and industrial systems. While the design of autonomous systems has typically relied on pre-defined models, the desire to operate in complex, unknown, or varying conditions implies that models of the system and the operating environment may not be always available. As a result, machine learning and data-driven approaches are on the rise and have the potential for impact in autonomous systems. However, embedding machine learning in autonomous systems is facing significant challenges in terms of safety, robustness, and resource efficiency.
MXenes are a new class of two-dimensional materials that have been recently discovered and have already shown great promise for a range of applications, including electrochemical energy storage, electromagnetic shielding, and energy conversion. MXenes can be made modified to possess porosity, which is a feature that can prove extremely beneficial for applications in various areas, including electrochemical energy storage, catalysis and gas adsorption. MXenes have already shown promise for gas separations, as they showed outstanding performance for CO2 capture in mixtures relevant for post-combustion carbon capture.
Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs) have gained notoriety in the media for their ability to create so-called “deep fakes” but their power can also be harnessed to provide predictions of optimal engineering designs. Such techniques offer the potential to significantly reduce design times by providing engineers with an instant solution to a design problem.
To meet the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement, aviation (~3% of human global CO2 emissions) must do its share. The target for air transportation is a 75% reduction in CO2 and a 90% reduction in NOx by 2050. To achieve such goals, the sector is looking at new energy carriers (batteries, fuel cells, hydrogen) and distributed propulsion concepts, as well as new configurations such as Ultra-High Aspect Ratio Wings (UHARW). Although the UHARW concept presents the distinct advantage of reduced induced drag, consequently leading to reduced fuel consumption and extended range, it concurrently introduces challenges associated with substantial aerodynamic load-induced wing bending moments and shear forces. These factors give rise to heightened structural weight, thereby constraining the overall advantages of the UHARW design. To tackle this challenge, some strategies can be employed, for example, integrating novel configurations, such as strut-braced wings, with novel technologies, such as active and passive load alleviation.
If you are a student of aerodynamics, chances are that you have drawn a conventional airfoil with nice, laminar incoming flow at some point. Enough of those steady, uniform streamlines! We welcome you to join us in disturbing the incoming flow and unravel in its unsteadiness using some of the best experimental facilities in the UK. If you are excited by the idea of subjecting bio-inspired wings to different types of canonical disturbances, measuring their aerodynamic responses, and taming their behaviour, then the vibrant and world-renowned Experimental Fluids Group at the University of Southampton is the place for you!
The Department Aeronautics and Astronautics of the University of Southampton is welcoming applications for PhD scholarships in the field of composite materials and structures.
The University of Southampton, in collaboration with Network Rail, is offering an exciting opportunity to inform future railway signalling strategy through a programme of PhD research.The PhD focuses on future control, command and signalling strategy (F-CCS) that sets out a heavily automated future for the railway. But with little previous research on how such advanced signalling control might impact performance in the wider sociotechnical system, this programme seeks to understand the benefits of automation and how human performance fits in with that at all stages of the lifecycle.
This project will develop and test microfluidic systems that can be deployed aboard small robot submarines (micro-AUVs) to sample and analyse aquatic chemistry.
Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship to investigate power electronic converters integrating energy storage and renewable generation into EV charging stations. The PhD will also investigate techniques for implementing online electrochemical impedance spectroscope (EIS), battery diagnostics and protection, and energy management within the control system of the converter. This PhD will support a wider research team working on a new EPSRC funded Programme Grant entitled ‘Future Electric Vehicle Energy networks supporting Renewables (FEVER)’, grant ref: EP/W005883/1.