PhD Studentship: Design and Structural Dynamics of Offshore Aquaculture Systems, PhD (Funded)

Offshore aquaculture is rapidly expanding as demand grows for sustainable, low-impact food production and competition for nearshore sites increases. By moving fish farming into deeper offshore sites, the industry can scale up while improving fish health. While, moving fish farms further offshore unlocks the potential for scalability and improvement in fish health, however, it exposes the structures to some of the most dynamic environmental conditions.

Understanding how these offshore aquaculture systems respond to waves, currents, and extreme storms is one of the key engineering challenges of the next decade. This PhD project places you at the forefront of this challenge, developing the tools and insight needed to design the next generation of offshore aquaculture infrastructure.

Research Overview

The aim of this project is to characterise the impact of coupled environmental loads on the dynamic structural response of offshore aquaculture farms and potential impacts on fish behaviour.

Depending on your research interests and academic background, this project can be tailored to combine knowledge from structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, offshore engineering and animal behaviour.

Impact and Relevance

Improving the understanding of structural loads in offshore aquaculture has direct implications for the expansion of offshore aquaculture as it can:

• Inform robust and failure-resistant farm designs
• Improve welfare of farmed fish and reduce environmental damage
• Lower capital and maintenance costs through optimised structures

Candidate Profile

Applicants should have a strong foundation in engineering, physical sciences, or a closely related discipline.

We are particularly interested in candidates with:

• A degree in civil, mechanical, ocean, or offshore engineering, or a related discipline
• Interest in structural dynamics, hydrodynamics, or marine systems
• Experience with programming or numerical tools (MATLAB, Python)
• A willingness to work across disciplinary boundaries
• Motivation to tackle open-ended, real-world engineering problems

Experience with CFD, finite element methods, offshore structures and aquaculture would be beneficial but is not essential.

What You will Gain

This PhD offers you the opportunity to work on a rapidly emerging offshore industry where many key engineering questions remain open. You will:

• Develop expertise in offshore structural dynamics
• Work with real-world environmental data and simulation tools
• Contribute to the design of next-generation sustainable ocean infrastructure
• Build skills applicable across marine engineering, and environmental systems