stillingsbetegnelse: Postdoc in Pavement Engineering

jobbeskrivelse:
The project “AWApave – Advanced and widely available pavement assessment tools for infrastructure evaluation” is a collaboration between DTU Civil Engineering and Dynatest, and aims at developing and marketing novel equipment for evaluation of the structural condition of roads and airfields. Traditional methods, such as the Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD), are slow and not practical on today’s busy infrastructure. The Rolling Weight Deflectometer (RWD), developed in this project, will be able to collect structural data about the pavement while following the traffic and causing minimal interruptions. The potential impact of the project as a whole is large, including considerable savings on road and pavement maintenance for road owners, amounting to more than 500 million Euro per year in the US and Europe alone. The postdoc will be affiliated with DTU Civil Engineering, but it is envisioned that much time will be spend at Dynatest in close collaboration with the team there. Responsibilities and tasks The data collected by the RWD needs to be post-processed properly as it varies with parameters such as driving speed, pavement temperature, and dynamics of the applied load. For results to be consistent across different values of these and other parameters, it is advantageous to refine currently known normalization techniques as well as to develop new methods: this is the main focus of the postdoc. The postdoc should handle the following tasks: 1.Applicability of existing FWD tools to RWD 2.Normalization of data for driving speed, temperature, and dynamics of the load 1. Applicability of existing FWD tools to RWD In FWD measurements, the time-history response of wave propagation in the pavement is captured by several geophones and FWD data has been studied extensively for more than 40 years. The first part of the postdoc will therefore include: •Digging into existing studies and FWD data to study correlations between deflection basin and load size, excitation frequency and temperature •Understanding and validating existing correlation models •Carrying out additional FWD experiments as needed 2. Normalization for driving speed, temperature and dynamics of the load The second part of the postdoc will be a study of data from the RWD obtained under various conditions. Due to mainly dynamic and visco-elastic effects, the response depends on a multitude of factors including: •Driving speed •Temperature •Load dynamics The goal is to mathematically describe a correlation between the above quantities and the deflection basin. Such a correlation will allow measurements obtained at different conditions to be compared and evaluated in a consistent fashion. Some of the complexities are in short: •Driving speed leads to asymmetry in the shape of the deflection basin. As the load moves it will catch up with the wave in its direction of travel and move away from the wave in the opposite direction. •Temperature leads to significant change in the stiffness, in particular of the top layer. As the stiffness increases, the deflection becomes smaller. Moreover, the impedance ratio between layers changes which may change the dynamic response. •Load dynamics can be due to sudden vertical movements of the vehicle resulting from unevenness on the road, and can lead to complicated shapes of the deflection basin. Qualifications The applicants should have: •PhD degree (or equivalent) in Engineering •Background in Pavement Engineering preferred •Experience with experimental investigation •Knowledge of numerical analysis •Interest in independent research •Good writing and communication skills in English The candidate is expected to be self-motivated, curious, capable of independent thinking and interested in close collaboration with fellow researchers. Assessment In the assessment of the candidates consideration will be given to: •Scientific production and research potential •Innovative skills and the ability to genera

Arbejdsgiver Navn: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet

Arbejdsgiver telefonnummer: 45252525

Arbejdsgiver faxnummer: 45881799

Job kort beskrivelse:
Undervisning og forskning på universiteter og højere læreranstalter

land: Danmark

region: Hovedstaden

krævede uddannelse: Ikke angivet

Kilde til jobtilbud: AMS, Offentlige arbejdsformidlinger, Danmark