PhD student (80-100%) - Design Concepts for Metamaterial Unit Lattices in Zürich

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. It is renowned for its excellent education, its cutting-edge fundamental research and its efforts to put new knowledge and innovations directly into practice.
INSPIRE seeks to appoint 15 highly motivated Ph.D. candidates to a range of positions across Europe. The Early Stage Researcher (ESR) positions offer an exciting opportunity to work with leading experts across Europe to develop advanced virtual models for the dynamic behaviour of engineering structures, primarily for offshore wind energy applications via the INSPIRE European Training Network (ETN), funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme.

The scientific aim of INSPIRE is to foster a new generation of highly qualified researchers and engineers, which will create a critical mass kernel, able to implement a holistic and novel soil-foundation-structure concept for the efficient protection of structures from all ground induced hazards, including earthquakes and all other sources of low-frequency noise and vibration excitations.

The INSPIRE network consists of leading academic institutions and companies from 6 different countries (Italy, Greece, France, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium). ESR01 in particular is hosted at ETH Zurich.

ESR01 will primarily focus on development of pile arrays building blocks incorporating vertically suspended multi axis inertial reaction mechanisms. The suspension mechanism will be optimized in terms of geometry, material and configuration in order to ensure that the pile is able to absorb energy from all horizontal translational and rotational motions of the ground. Optimum distribution of the suspended mass will be considered, in order to reduce its overall weight. Moreover, energy dissipation structures are to be designed as part of the suspended mechanisms, with emphasis on properly stressed non-linear elastomer structures, in combination to other dissipation approaches, such as a filling with dissipative liquids. This doctoral student position is offered for 3 years with the earliest starting date in June 2019. Primary advisor is Prof. E. Chatzi, co-advisor is Prof. I. Anastasopoulos, at D-BAUG ETH Zurich.

We look forward to receiving your online application including: a clear designation INSPIRE ESR01 you are applying for, a letter of motivation, a CV, electronic copies of your academic diplomas and certificates as well as contact details from at least 2 referees. The applications will be reviewed starting March 15, 2019 with the intent to conclude the search by the end of April 2019. Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered.