PhD Studentship: Mass and Heat Transfer in Energetic Ocean Surface Waves

This project provides an annual stipend of £19,237.

Project Summary

This studentship is offered as part of wider Manchester Met investment in our future thought leaders. This represents an opportunity to join the Faculty of Science and Engineering’s growing doctoral research community committed to excellent research with impact in our new £117M state-of-the-art facilities.

Ocean waves are crucial and challenging in engineering and environmental sciences. Energetic waves can severely damage seawalls, ships, oil/gas platforms and marine renewable energy infrastructure. More broadly, ocean waves also influence the earth’s climate, weather, and ecosystems by facilitating the mass and heat exchange across the air-sea interface. Accurate estimate of mass and heat transfer in waves is of utmost importance in:

• formulating more accurate weather forecasting models
• better predicting extreme loadings on marine structures. 

Numerical modelling provides a feasible way to overcome the limit of theoretical methods and measurement technologies to acquire the needed fine-scale data for physics-informed neural networks.

The project will build on the Mathematical Modelling and Flow Analysis Group’s most recent research achievement to develop a new-generation interdisciplinary physical-engineering-environmental numerical modelling framework to investigate mass and heat transfer in energetic ocean waves.

Project aims and objectives

• Develop an interdisciplinary physical-engineering-environmental numerical framework for modelling mass and heat transfer in ocean surface waves.
• Determine the roles of fluid diffusivity and wave motion in mass and heat transfer under still water and non-breaking monochromatic wave conditions.
• Determine wave steepness effects on mass/heat transfer rate under various wave conditions.
• Determine heat penetration depth in water columns for wave groups subject to modulation instability under non-, weakly- and strongly-breaking conditions.

Specific requirements of the candidate

Applicants should hold, or expect to receive, a first class or high upper second class honours degree or equivalent in physics, engineering, computing or mathematics. A masters level qualification in applied/computational mathematics, engineering or similar would be desirable.

Experiences in one or several of the following areas would be beneficial:

• computational fluid dynamics
• hydrodynamics and thermodynamics
• numerical modelling of heat transfer
• high-performance computing

How to apply

Interested applicants should contact Dr Zhihua Ma for an informal discussion.

To apply you will need to complete the online application form for a full-time PhD in mathematics (or download the PGR application form).

You should also complete the PGR thesis proposal and a Narrative CV (supplementary information) form addressing the project’s aims and objectives, demonstrating how the skills you have map to the area of research and why you see this area as being of importance and interest. 

If applying online, you will need to upload your statement in the supporting documents section or email the application form and statement to PGRAdmissions@mmu.ac.uk.

Closing date: 14 October 2024.

Expected start date: January 2025 for Home students and April 2025 for International students.

Please note that Home fees are covered. Eligible International students will need to pay the difference in tuition fee funding. 

Please quote the reference: SciEng-2024-BHF-Ocean-Surface-Waves

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