Overview
Thermal environment management due to global warming, particularly heat stress, is growing in importance and poses a substantial risk to workers and general population worldwide. Therefore, detecting conditions resulting in heat stress is essential to become aware of the problem and take early mitigation measures to help prevent heat-related illness and maintain productivity. Thermal manikins or individual monitoring solutions coupled with sophisticated virtual models offer tools to predict human response in advance and recommend efficient mitigation measures before occurrence of the risk. In addition, validated dedicated models can serve as optimization tools for work environment, work organization, and protective clothing and equipment.
To develop such models – so-called digital twins – the suite of relevant models needs to be selected, validated and possibly improved and combined with relevant input data from manikins or individual body monitoring. The objective of the PhD project is (1) to develop a general methodology for creating digital twins for different aspects of exposure to heat (e.g., productivity, thermal comfort, health impact), (2) combining the models with thermal manikins and individual body monitoring applications, and validate the solution using manikin and human data.
Your tasks
- Development of thermoregulation and thermal sensation models for exposures to the heat based on existing models
- Development of a family of digital twins and their validation with focus on productivity and parametric studies with regards to clothing and working conditions for digital twin for productivity as a demonstrator
- Connecting digital twins to advanced thermal manikins (flame manikin, thermal sweating manikin) and individual body monitoring. Investigation of validity and sensitivity of heat stress predicting tools
Your profile
- Completed MSc degree in mechanical, environmental or biomedical engineering or similar
- Experience in physics-based modeling (finite element modeling, computational fluid dynamics) is considered as an advantage
- High interest in interdisciplinary research
- Excellent communication skills and fluency in English (both written and oral) are mandatory
Administration. A project duration of 3 years is envisaged to carry out the above research tasks in the form of a PhD project. The candidate will perform his/her research at Empa in St.Gallen and will get the PhD degree from ETHZ (Department of Health Science and Technology).
For further information about the position please contact Agnes Psikuta [email protected] and visit our websites www.empa.ch/web/s401 .
We look forward to receiving your online application including a letter of motivation, CV including publications and presentations, diplomas with transcripts/grades and contact details of two referees. Please upload the requested documents through our webpage. Applications via email will not be considered.
Empa, Esther Zürcher, Human Resources, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Apply:
https://apply.refline.ch/673276/1542/9JI1K33wRUsvNPvVZ8tMw-bEmhgJ0NeflqhoDcmn7dtHSTq7mcuRHQ/apply
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