ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research has a vacancy in the research group »Wind Energy Systems« at the Institute of Physics of the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg starting on 01.12.2024 for a

PhD Position / Research Assistant (f/m/d)
Closed-loop wind farm control
(E13 TV-L, 75 %)

Several promising wake control strategies have been identified for wind farm control, such as wake steering or dynamic induction control. Wake steering is currently the most promising and the most validated strategy, which is based on misaligning the upwind turbines to create more favourable conditions for the downwind ones. However, due to inherent uncertainties, complex physics and high time constants, controllers utilising said wake control strategies are dominantly open loop and thus highly dependent on engineering models and sensitive to modelling and measurement errors. Furthermore, the impact of different wake control strategies on structural loads is still not fully researched, leading to loads being typically neglected when designing wind farm control.

Job description
The main objective of your PhD project is to advance models describing the effect of wind farm control strategies on structural loads and to develop loads-aware wind farm control.

Among others, your tasks will comprise:

• Planning and execution of a field campaign consisting of four utility-scale wind turbines
• Analysis of the power and loads data from the field campaign and from aeroelastic simulations
• Development of wind farm control with constrained structural loads
• Development of framework for including the load-based estimation of wake position in the wind farm control algorithm
• Cooperating closely with a wind turbine manufacturer and international researchers.

Job offer
We offer you the opportunity to develop your scientific career in a young and lively academic environment. You will be working in the WindLab – one of the university's most modern office and lab spaces – while you will also have the opportunity to do flexible and mobile work. Your pathway towards the PhD is actively supported by, e.g.,

• multidisciplinary cooperation with other researchers at ForWind and Fraunhofer IWES in Oldenburg,
• direct collaboration with industry while maintaining the links with our national and international partners in academia,
• optional secondment at an international research institute
• development of personal, scientific, and teaching skills through an individual training programme and selected teaching tasks,
• opportunities to present scientific results at international conferences and through peer-reviewed publications to extend your specific network,
• structured supervision of PhD process.

The employment is initially limited to three years with an intention to further prolong up to four years to facilitate a PhD. The payment is based on the collective agreement for the public service in the German federal states, TV-L E13, for a 75% position.

Candidate profile
Requirements for employment include:

• a qualifying university master's degree in Mechanical, Aerospace or Naval Engineering, Physical Sciences, Wind Energy, Renewable Energy or equivalent,
• aptitude and willingness to pursue a PhD with an experimental focus,
• profound knowledge of the following fields: wind energy, aeroelastic simulations,
• familiarity with wind turbine controllers and a basic understanding of wind farm control,
• advanced programming capabilities with MATLAB and Python,
• experience with the aeroelastic solvers openFAST and DNV Bladed,
• high motivation and ability to jointly work on applied research topics,
• very good English skills.

Desired (but not mandatory) qualifications are:

• hands-on experience with C++ or Fortran,
• experience abroad of several months during the school, study period or employment after graduation,
• and good German skills.

The Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg strives to increase the proportion of women in science. Therefore, women are strongly encouraged to apply. In accordance with § 21, para. 3 NHG, female applicants will be given preferential consideration in the case of equivalent qualifications. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference in the case of equal suitability.
Further, the university cares for a family-friendly working environment and offers a family service centre and children's daycare on campus.

Research environment at ForWind – Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
Wind energy research at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg has gained international recognition by its integration into ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hannover and Bremen and the national Wind Energy Research Alliance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES) and ForWind.
At ForWind, we maintain and value collaboration between our research groups and partner institutions such as the European Academy of Wind Energy members. In Oldenburg, our 50 researchers from physics, meteorology and engineering are collaborating at the »Research Laboratory for Turbulence and Wind Energy Systems« (WindLab) centred on wind physics. Our mission is to develop an improved understanding of atmospheric and wind power plant flow physics required to serve the global demand for clean and affordable electricity. Therefore, we conduct laboratory experiments, free-field measurements and HPC-based numerical simulations. We have direct access to the DLR research wind farm WiValdi. At this internationally outstanding infrastructure for wind energy research, the interaction of atmospheric wind fields with two utility-scale wind turbines can be investigated to an unprecedented extent.
The main topics include the description and modelling of wind turbulence, the analysis of interactions of turbulent atmospheric wind flow and wind energy systems, as well as control of wind turbines and wind farms. The covered scales range from small-scale turbulence up to meteorological phenomena. Our research facilities comprise three turbulent wind tunnels, various equipment for free-field measurements at on- and offshore wind farms and a high-performance computing cluster. Almost all our projects combine analyses at more than one of these infrastructures.

Contact
For questions regarding this job opportunity, please contact Prof. Dr. Martin Kühn at +49(0)441/798-5061 or preferably by email at .

Further information is available at www.forwind.de/en/ and https://uol.de/en/physics/research/we-sys.

Please submit your application preferably electronically as one PDF file by 15.09.2024 to University of Oldenburg, Faculty V, Institute of Physics, ForWind - Center for Wind Energy Research, Research Group Wind Energy Systems, Prof. Dr. Martin Kühn, Küpkersweg 70, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany, and include reference #UN106.

The pdf file must include either in English or German:

• A letter motivating your application
• Curriculum vitae
• Grade transcripts and BSc/MSc diploma
• Employment references
• A one-page research statement. You are requested to present your notion of the field of the advertised PhD topic and some initial ideas for tackling it.

A second PDF file containing your Master Thesis or relevant research papers (if available) is an optional attachment.

We are looking forward to receiving your application.