PhD Student / Research Assistant (f/m/d) Efficient Design of Metal Additive Manufactured Components for Process Engineering

The doctoral thesis develops tools and methods to efficiently design additive manufactured (3D printed) parts for process engineering. Metal additive manufacturing enables new designs for miniaturized, modular process plants for the synthesis and upscaling of chemical products. Typical lead applications are power-to-x routes for methanol and efuels.

Digital workflows of design and optimization enable the efficient development of parts. This requires a very good understanding of the interaction of part geometry and process conditions. Formalizing this knowledge is the foundation for a design feature data base and modular design algorithms. This often requires to condense complex multiphysics simulation models into faster surrogate models by model order reduction or machine learning. The goal is a versatile design toolbox of unit operations (e.g., mixing) or design features (e.g., turbulence promotors).

The institute has already demonstrated the feasibility of design automation in process engineering (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2023.02.191). We use the metal additive manufacturing processes of laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M, SLM) and metal binder jetting to build parts for validation on our test benches.

Persönliche Qualifikation

• Very good university degree (Master) in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering or a related discipline
• Solid background in the fundamentals of heat and mass transport and in chemical engineering unit operations
• Experience in CAD design, CFD simulations and programming
• Experience in experimental lab work
• Experience preferred in additive manufacturing technologies (e.g. selective laser melting, metal binder jetting)
• Curiosity and creativity
• Ability to organize and structure an exploratory project
• Fluent in German and English (min. C1)

Salary

Salary category 13 TV-L, depending on the fulfillment of professional and personal requirements.

Organisationseinheit

Contract duration

limited to 3 years

Application up to

August 6, 2024

Contact person in line-management

For further information, please contact Prof. Christoph Klahn, phone +49 721 608-23164.