PhD Vacancy

A PhD position is available at the Delft Center for Systems and Control (DCSC), Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, with the following focus: “Reconfigurable Fault-Tolerant Predictive Flight Control”

Project description

Current fault tolerant control strategies for commercial aircraft are based on fail-safe flight control systems, where a nominal control law is switched first to a robust solution and then if necessary to a more direct controlling of the actuator surfaces (with minimal level of stability augmentation), independent of the type of abnormal event. Each of these control laws are designed off-line to have different levels of robustness and performance.

The main goal of the project is to investigate and develop aircraft guidance and control technologies that facilitate the automated handling of off-nominal events (such as unusual attitude and aerodynamic angles, faulty actuators and sensors, wing-icing, etc.) and optimize the aircraft status and flight while keeping its safety level compliant with current regulations.

The project will investigate on-line predictive control based approaches to integrated fault-detection and isolation, along with approximation techniques that can be used to represent the resulting reconfigurable control methods in an explicit form that facilitate validation and verification flight clearance analysis. In addition to developing and testing research methodology and algorithms, the successful candidate will be involved in the interaction with representatives of various industries and stakeholders who participate in the sponsoring EU project, and eventual implementation tasks on test setups.

Qualifications

Candidates for this challenging project should have an MSc degree and background in e.g., systems and control, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or aerospace engineering. The candidate must be enthusiastic and greatly interested in fundamental research in addition to having good programming skills for implementing state-of-the-art advanced algorithms. Familiarity or previous experience with the following topics is a plus: model predictive control, nonlinear dynamic inversion, subspace predictive control, fault detection and identification, approximate explicit MPC.

In addition, excellent communication skills are important for this position and a good command of the English language is required.

Term and conditions

Enrollment and salary are according to the Employment Agreement of Dutch Universities,  with an annually increasing salary starting at EUR 2042 gross per month. Enrollment will start from September 2012, but later starting dates are possible as well.

The PhD student will be appointed for a period of four years. After the first year an valuation will take place to confirm or decline the position. The project will be supervised by dr. Tamás Keviczky.

Application

Interested applicants should send their detailed Curriculum Vitae, the names of two professional referees, a list of courses taken with grades obtained, a list of publications, a summary of their MSc thesis and a cover letter stating their motivation, preferably by e-mail.

Further information

Additional information about the vacancy can be obtained from dr. Tamás Keviczky (t.keviczky@tudelft.nl) and the following web-site: http://www.dcsc.tudelft.nl/.