The Department of Applied Mechanics conducts research in the areas of vehicle design and mechanical engineering. The research is often carried out together with national and international academic and industrial partners, and it concerns both fundamental and applied problems.

The research at the Division of Dynamics at the Department of Applied Mechanics is directed towards various dynamic, vibration and wave propagation problems, also with coupling to other physical phenomena such as wear or piezoelectricity. Both fundamental and applied research is performed, and although the main thrust is towards modelling and numerical treatment, experimental activities also play an important role. A large part of the applied research is performed within the competence centre CHARMEC (CHAlmers Railway MEChanics), see www.chalmers.se/charmec.

The division has a large teaching involvement giving basic courses in mechanics and strength of materials and advanced courses in mechanics, FEM, structural dynamics, and optimization of dynamical systems.

The Division of Dynamics at the Department of Applied Mechanics is seeking a new PhD student to start in the autumn of 2010. The research will be conducted within the project described below.

PhD Project: Multicriterion optimization of track properties
The optimal properties of a railway track will be searched for with design parameters being related to the railway sleeper and its interacting track components. The optimization will be multicriterion in the sense that it should target both the failure strength of the sleeper and the long term geometric stability of the track. Since the railway track properties vary significantly in space and time, a stochastic approach to the optimization will be taken. The research work in the project will be reported through scientific papers published in international scientific journals and conference proceedings.

The project will be jointly supervised by Professor Thomas Abrahamsson and Professor Jens Nielsen together with Dr Rikard Bolmsvik from the industry. Cooperating partners will be Chalmers University of Technology, Abetong AB and Trafikverket. The results of the optimization will be summarized as design guidelines.

Professor Thomas Abrahamsson
E-mail: thomas.abrahamsson@chalmers.se
Phone: (+46) 31 772 15 06

Jens Nielsen
E-mail: jens.nielsen@chalmers.se
Phone: (+46) 36 30 59 52

• SACO: Jan Lindér
• ST: Marie Wenander
• SEKO: Johan Persson

All reachable via Chalmers exchange: +46 31 772 10 00