Research Associate / Senior Research Associate in Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE)

The role

Research Associate / Senior Research Associate in Ultrasonics and Non-Destructive Evaluation to develop advanced ultrasonic inspection for additively-manufactured aerospace components in a world-leading research group as part of a major a project with GKN.

What will you be doing?

You will be working on a major collaborative programme funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) that is led by GKN Aerospace with CFMS and the Universities of Bristol and Manchester as the other partners. The project is centred around GKN’s proprietary Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology which is a more efficient and sustainable additive manufacturing method for large (multi-metre) titanium aerospace components. Bristol’s contribution to the project, and your work, will be around the development of advanced ultrasonic Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques that are suitable for deployment at scale on these components. This will involve design and execution of an experimental campaign to ultrasonically characterise the material, numerical modelling to optimise the inspection configuration, validation on lab-scale experiments at Bristol, support for industrial implementation on large-scale components at GKN, and support for inspection-qualification simulations at CFMS. You will also perform more speculative research on higher sensitivity ultrasonic measurements for possible process feedback and non-contact ultrasonic inspection methods that could be integrated into the process itself. There is scope for visiting and short periods of work within GKN Aerospace UK sites over the course of the project. Funding is currently available until December 2027 although the project may be extended to allow the appointment to last up to 3 years.

You should apply if

You should have a PhD (or working towards one for Grade I) in a relevant discipline and experience of numerical simulation, data processing, and statistics. Ideally, you will also have experience of ultrasonic NDE and working on collaborative research projects.

Additional information

For informal queries please contact: Prof. Paul Wilcox, p.wilcox@bristol.ac.uk

To find out more about what it's like to work in the Faculty of Engineering, and how the Faculty supports people to achieve their potential, please see our staff blog:

https://engineering.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/category/engineering-includes-me/

Contract type: Open ended with fixed funding until 17/12/2027

Hybrid working: We would expect role-holder to work onsite (Queen’s Building, University Walk, BS3 1PF) at least 3 days per week to perform measurements, interact with others in the group, attend group meetings etc. Exact days can be flexible.

This advert will close at 23:59 UK time on Tuesday 1st July.

Interviews are expected to take place in the first half of July. Dates will be confirmed in due course.

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