Seabed response to mooring lines for floating offshore wind

About the project

About the Project This PhD scholarship is offered by the EPSRC CDT in Offshore Wind Energy Sustainability and Resilience; a partnership between the Universities of Durham, Hull, Loughborough and Sheffield. The successful applicant will undertake six months of training with the rest of the CDT cohort at the University of Hull before continuing their PhD research at the University of Sheffield. Floating offshore wind turbines are anchored to the seabed by long mooring lines that must withstand decades of cyclic motion caused by wind, waves, and platform movement. These lines interact dynamically with the seabed, where repeated dragging and settling cause the sediment to deform and form trenches. These evolving seabed features change the line’s mechanical response and can affect the long-term stability and fatigue life of the mooring system. Current engineering design tools represent this interaction in simplified ways, unable to capture the grain-scale processes that govern trenching, remoulding, and pore-pressure variation. This project will develop a new computational model to simulate seabed–mooring interaction at the particle scale. It will combine the Discrete Element Method (DEM), which tracks the motion and contact forces between individual sediment grains, with a lattice-based fluid solver representing the pore water. This coupled approach will make it possible to examine how sediments rearrange, lose strength, and generate excess pore pressures under cyclic loading. Using the Geotechnical Engineering Group’s in-house HYBIRD framework, the student will run high-performance simulations to investigate how soil density, permeability, and loading history influence trench formation and resistance degradation. The findings will inform improved seabed models for floating wind design, helping the offshore sector develop safer, more reliable, and cost-efficient mooring systems while providing the candidate with advanced training in computational geomechanics and high-performance simulation. Training & Development Your training will begin with an intensive six-month programme at the University of Hull, drawing on the expertise and facilities of all four academic partners. It is supplemented by Continuing Professional Development (CPD), which is embedded throughout your 4-year research scholarship giving you a broad understanding of the breadth and depth of current and emerging offshore wind sector needs. You will receive in-house training on multiphase DEM–LBM modelling and code development using the HYBIRD framework within the Geotechnical Engineering Group. Additional training in high-performance computing and version control will be provided through the University of Sheffield HPC Centre, complemented by CDT and professional workshops on numerical geomechanics and offshore renewables. Entry Requirements If you have received a First-class Honours degree, or a 2:1 Honours degree and a Masters, or a Distinction at Masters level with any undergraduate degree (or international equivalents) in Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering or Physics, we would like to hear from you. If you have not previously been educated in English, you will be required to provide evidence of your English language ability . We require an IELTS (or equivalent) score of 7.0 overall, with no less than 6.0 in each skill. Guaranteed Interview Scheme We offer a Guaranteed Interview Scheme for home fee status candidates who identify as Black or Black mixed or Asian or Asian mixed if they meet the programme entry requirements. This positive action is to support recruitment of under-represented ethnic groups to our programme and is an opt-in process. How to Apply Please familiarise yourself with the AURA CDT website before you apply. The Frequently asked questions page and Candidate resources page are essential reading. As part of the recruitment process, please submit a short 5-minute film of you delivering a presentation on “How do your experiences and qualities provide a background to contribute to research and innovation for the project you have applied for”. You will be assessed on the content of your presentation, not your film editing skills, but please film in an appropriate, quiet location. The presentation could be a slide presentation with voice over, or you may wish to present simply talking to the camera, use the method you are most comfortable with. Please use tools and technology that are accessible to you e.g. your mobile phone, Keynote or Powerpoint. You may only apply for ONE project offered through the CDT, via this page . After filling in your personal details, please select ‘Doctoral Training Course’ as the qualification you are applying for, and ‘AURA II CDT’ for the specific doctoral training course. Please upload the following to your application: · Complete transcripts and degree certificates (where possible). The documents should be provided in English and the original language. · Your CV. · A completed Supplementary Application Form . This includes space for you to provide a link where the shortlisting panel may view your film. Save the supplementary application form as a pdf, labelled: Last namefirst name PhD application form , and upload it when asked to add your Supporting Statement. Do not send your form directly to the CDT. Interviews First-round interviews will be held online during early to mid-February 2026. The interview panel will comprise the project supervisors and a CDT representative. Where the project involves external or industry supervisors then they may form part of the interview panel and your application documents will be shared with them. If you are successful, you will progress to a second interview towards the end of February 2026. This will be with key academics from the CDT from across our four partner institutions (Durham, Hull, Loughborough, Sheffield) and your application documents will be shared with them. Documents shared with external staff will have the guaranteed interview scheme section removed from your supplementary application form. Interested? Queries should be directed to Dr Alessandro Leonardi ( a.leonardi@sheffield.ac.uk ) or the CDT ( auracdt@hull.ac.uk )

Research areas