PhD fellowship in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN European Training Network INSPIRE on the development of innovative ground concepts for structure protection

Outline

We are pleased to invite applications for a PhD position in the new four-year EU-funded Marie Sklodowska- Curie ITN programme “INSPIRE - INNOVATIVE GROUND INTERFACE CONCEPTS FOR STRUCTURE PROTECTION”.

The goal of ITN INSPIRE is to foster a new generation of highly qualified researchers and engineers able to implement novel soil-foundation-structure concepts for the efficient protection of structures from all ground induced hazards, including earthquakes and all other sources of low-frequency noise and vibration excitations.

INSPIRE relies on recent innovative scientific and technological concepts, mainly developed within the broad concept of meta-materials – natural or artificial materials or structures which exhibit extraordinary properties for inhibiting or conditioning wave propagation in all spatial directions over broad frequency bands. General developments of meta-materials will be combined or enriched with novel absorption and isolation concepts (i.e negative effective mass and stiffness moduli media, novel friction vibro-impact rocking motion based non-linear mechanisms) with the goal to overcome the limitations of the existing seismic and low-frequency isolation technologies and deliver highly-damped, low maintenance and easily implemented designs.

This network is led by National Technical University of Athens and consists of 7 European universities (Univ. of Trento, ETH, Univ. of Lille, Technical University of Keiserslauten, Univ. of Mons, Univ of Bologna) 1 Research Institute (Institut Fresnel of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) as well as 5 industrial partners (RINAC, FIP, ADT, IGF, GRSc).

Partners :

NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS (http://www.mech.ntua.gr/gr/antoniadis, coordinator)

1. UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO (http://www.ing.unitn.it/~bigoni/),
2. EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH

(https://www.ethz.ch/content/specialinterest/baug/institute-ibk/structur…),

1. CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE

(http://www.fresnel.fr/perso/guenneau/),

1. UNIVERSITE DE LILLE (https://physique.iemn.fr/467-2/membres/yan-pennec/),
2. TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF KAISERSLAUTERN

(https://www.bauing.uni-kl.de/en/soil-mechanics/personnel/prof-dr-ing-ch…)

1. UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA (https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/alessandro.marzani/en),
2. UNIVERSITY OF MONS (http://hosting.umons.ac.be/html/mecara/~georges/georges.htm),
3. RINAC CONSULTING S.P.A.,
4. FIP MEC,
5. ADT-OMEGA CONSULTING ENGINEERS S.A,
6. INGENIEURGESELLSCHAFT DR.-ING. FISCHBACH MBH,
7. GROUP SCIENCE,

Objectives of ESR04 (Institut Fresnel):

1) Design a seismic wave cloaking approach using conformal and non-euclidean elastodynamic tools, able to be implemented in practice with appropriate columns distributed in a soft soil (see figure for preliminary results).

2) Verify the results with Time-domain numerical simulations using a finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) software and frequency-domain simulations with a finite element software to geometries surrounding the buildings, as well as to geometrical constraints of the surrounding soil terrains.

Expected Results of ESR04:

1) A new concept of a cloak/waveguide

2) New numerical tools for non-linear transformation elasto-dynamics, taking into account arbitrary soil geometries.

What is funded

The post holder will be employed by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) on a fixed term (36-month) contract, he/she will work 37 hours per week at Institut Fresnel (https://www.fresnel.fr/spip/) and will be enrolled as a PhD student at the doctoral school ED352 Physique et sciences de la matière of the University of Aix-Marseille (https://ecole-doctorale-352.univ-amu.fr/en).

Duration

A PhD student is typically registered for a period of 3 years in a doctoral school in France. In some specific cases, a doctoral school can grant an extension of 1 year (additional year not funded by ITN INSPIRE).

The candidate will be expected to spend 3 Months at TREVI on geotechnical engineering, 2 months at JRC on seismic protection and 1 Month at UNITN on modelling of elastic media as part of secondment contracts.

Eligibility

The candidate should be a European citizen and should hold a Master degree in Mechanical or Civil Engineering delivered by a European University (not a French University) at the time of his/her application. He/she should be fluent in English and good skills in programming (matlab/python) and knowledge of a finite element/finite difference time domain package (comsol multiphysics/SPECFEM) would be appreciated.