Supervisory Team: William Powrie, David Milne, Madhu Murthy
Project description
Researching the totally reliable, affordable, zero-carbon, 24-hour railway
The railway is at the heart of Britain’s economy and touches the lives of millions of people daily. Future success relies on it becoming more resilient and more cost and carbon efficient, and on improving its service to passengers and freight operators.
High capacity, high speed inter-urban rail for passengers and freight is of major importance around the world. Increased capacity on new and existing routes is urgently needed to decarbonise land transport and improve economic efficiency.
Britain’s railways continue to carry large numbers of passengers each year, on a network that has roughly halved in size since the 1960s. This has resulted in the need to extract as much capacity as possible from the existing network, by running longer, heavier and more frequent trains. There is especially scope to increase the speed and axle loads of freight trains, but there are concerns that to do so might cause an infrastructure maintenance threshold to be crossed. Your project will investigate this effect with respect to ballasted track.
The investigation of ballasted track settlement will be based on tests in the Southampton Rail Testing Facility, in which cumulative ballast settlements under millions of load cycles will be assessed as a function of varying axle load and loading pattern / frequency. The experimental data will be supported by various types of modelling, from empirical ballast settlement equations through rheological type models through to a finite element / vehicle-track interaction analysis.
Enjoying the best of both worlds, you will be part funded by Network Rail (NR) and work alongside a world-leading research team at the new National Infrastructure Laboratory in Southampton. You will be a member of a small cohort of doctoral students working with NR in the research group that leads the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) Centre of Excellence in Infrastructure. You will be supervised jointly by the University and NR, with opportunities to spend periods of time in NR offices and on site, and enhance your future employability. Your PhD research outputs are likely to lead quickly to real world trials and potential adoption into standards and practice.
If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact William Powrie, Geotechnical Research Group, Email: wp@soton.ac.uk for a response or to ask for a call back.
Entry Requirements
Applicants should have at least a relevant UK 2:1 honours degree or its international equivalent.
Closing date: 11 January 2021. Short-listed candidates will be interviewed by the University soon afterwards.
Funding: full tuition for UK students. Successful candidates will enjoy an enhanced tax-free stipend equivalent to a starting salary of £27,000 per annum for up to 4 years, subject to confirmation by Network Rail.
How To Apply
Apply online https://www.southampton.ac.uk/courses/how-to-apply/postgraduate-applications.page . programme type (Research), 2022/23, Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, next page “PhD Engineering & Environment (Full time)”. Please enter “Threshold loading effects on railway ballast” under the Topic or Field of Research. A parallel application to Network Rail will be required.
Applications should include:
Curriculum Vitae
Personal statement of your reasons for applying, not exceeding 500 words
Two reference letters
Degree Transcripts to date
For further information please contact: feps-pgr-apply@soton.ac.uk