We are looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate in computational science, applied mathematics, or mechanical engineering to join a project at the frontier of industrial sustainability and high-performance simulation. Heat treatment is a cornerstone of aerospace manufacturing, where safety, performance, and reliability are non-negotiable.
Traditional oil-based quenching methods, while effective, pose serious environmental and safety concerns. Polymer-based quenchants offer a cleaner, safer alternative — but their physics is complex and still poorly understood. This project aims to change that. You will develop a next-generation, high-fidelity numerical framework to simulate the full polymer quenching process — capturing heat transfer, turbulent flow, and the dynamic formation of a polymer insulating film.
Formed at the vapor-liquid interface during boiling, it governs the cooling behavior and is key to controlling material microstructure and mechanical properties. Indeed, it requires to create physically grounded, predictive simulations based on the true coupled dynamics of the process.Your work will extend advanced boiling models and integrate them into a robust finite-element solver infrastructure developed by the research team. Validated against in-house experiments, your simulations will directly support the transition to cleaner, polymer-based quenching processes for aerospace-critical parts. This includes turbine disks, structural elements and components where performance and safety are of extreme importance.
More details can be found in the attached PDF document.
