Interactive Semi-automatic Generation And Assessment Of Design Alternatives In Engineering

客机行业正在进入一个快速创新的时代，环境影响的限制要求大规模的技术偏离现状。作为这个全额资助的博士生奖学金的保持器持有者，您将与来自空客的工程师合作，帮助开发新的计算工具，以实现航空脱碳的飞跃。当前一代的设计工具旨在促进对大部分冻结布局的系统进行渐进式改进。该博士将专注于使用最新的几何建模/机器学习/人工智能技术来开发自动化探索大型设计空间的方法，从而实现激进的新解决方案。这对于那些传统设计知识有限的应用领域尤其重要，例如液氢（LH 2）燃料系统和电力推进系统。基础研究问题有多个方面，因此学生将有一定的灵活性，与导师合作，选择最适合自己兴趣的研究方向，跨越几何建模，数值优化、人工智能算法、基于物理的找形技术以及设计师/计算机界面开发。该博士学位还提供了难得的机会，可以加入两个充满活力的团队，致力于设计和设计工具开发的前沿：南安普顿大学航空航天系，以及作为至少六个月借调的一部分，菲尔顿空客的工程团队。您的监督团队还将包括来自大学和空客的研究人员。

The passenger aircraft industry is heading into an era of rapid innovation, with environmental impact constraints demanding massive technological departures from the status quo. Working with engineers from AIRBUS, as a holder of this fully funded PhD studentship, you will help develop new computational tools required to accomplish this leap towards decarbonising aviation.The current generation of design tools was conceived to facilitate incremental improvements on systems with a largely frozen layout. This PhD will focus on using the latest geometry modelling/machine learning/AI techniques to develop approaches that automate the exploration of large design spaces, thus enabling radical, new solutions. This will be especially important in application areas where there is limited legacy design knowledge to rely on to steer optimisation processes, such as liquid Hydrogen (LH2) fuel systems and electric propulsion systems.The underlying research questions have multiple facets and the student will thus have some flexibility, working with the supervisors, in choosing a line of enquiry that best suits your interests, spanning geometry modelling, numerical optimization, AI algorithms, physics-based form finding techniques, and designer/computer interface development. This PhD also offers the rare opportunity to join two vibrant teams working at the cutting edge of design and design tool development: the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at the University of Southampton and, as part of a secondment of at least six months, an engineering team at AIRBUS, Filton. Your supervisory team will also include researchers from both the University and AIRBUS.