PhD in Civil Engineering – GPU-accelerated simulation capabilities for lifetime estimation of large connector seals

Start date: 01 October 2025 or earlier

A fully funded PhD Studentship is available at the James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow in collaboration with Freudenberg from 1st October 2025 (or earlier).  

Introduction and Motivation: 

Freudenberg is a global technology group whose goal is to strengthen its customers and society in the long term through forward-looking innovations. Together with partners and customers, having a deep focus on science and technology, the eleven business groups within Freudenberg aspire to develop cutting-edge products, state-of-the-art solutions, and services for some 40 market segments and thousands of applications, ranging from seals, batteries, fuel cells, vibration control components, technical textiles, filters, cleaning technologies and products, speciality chemicals, and medical products.  

Commitment to excellence, reliability, and proactive, responsible action have been part of the company’s core values as practised for more than 170 years. Today, Freudenberg Group employs more than 51,000 employees and generates sales of EUR 11.75 billion. At the end of the year 2022, the number of companies in Freudenberg totalled 457, spread across 56 countries.  

Freudenberg Flow Technologies (FFL), as one business group of Freudenberg, provides sealing solutions for nearly all kinds of rotating equipment with a comprehensive portfolio of mechanical seals, carbon floating ring seals, magnetic couplings, seal supply systems and special products, especially for pumps, compressors, agitators and special machines.  

This research project aims to enhance the finite element analysis (FEA) capabilities of Freudenberg by developing graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated contact and material nonlinearity/large deformation algorithms in the open-source software MoFEM (http://mofem.eng.gla.ac.uk) for expediting the FE simulations. The specific focus will be on the simulation for lifetime estimation of large connector seals produced by Freudenberg Flow Technology (FFL), which currently requires over 10 hours of simulations in commercial FEA software that often fails to converge at a certain point in the analysis. Moreover, the accuracy of the local stress distribution is low despite using a significant number of (low order) finite elements. This project will tackle both the accuracy and the computational time problems. Using higher-order FE approaches for the elastoplastic contact problem will significantly improve the accuracy of the lifetime predictions. Moreover, advanced algorithms exploiting acceleration by modern GPUs will speed up these challenging analyses.  

Project Objectives: 

1. Implementation of higher order mixed FE formulations capable of handling large deformation elastoplastic contact in large connector seals. 
2. Development of GPU-accelerated and highly scalable algorithms based on block solvers to speed up simulations. 
3. Implementation of robust and efficient error indicators highlighting regions of the mesh requiring refinement. 
4. Implementation of mesh and approximation order adaptive automatic refinement algorithms (hp-refinement). 

Industry Partner Contribution: 

Freudenberg will play a vital role in this research project by providing essential industrial expertise and validation capabilities. In-house testing facilities will be utilized to conduct experimental studies, generating valuable data for code validation and calibration. The company’s engineering team will provide feedback on the practical applicability of the developed methods and contribute industry-specific knowledge regarding manufacturing constraints and typical imperfection patterns. Additionally, consulting services will be offered throughout the project, ensuring that the research outcomes align with industrial needs and standards. This will ensure that the developed tools are not only academically rigorous but also practically applicable in real-world engineering scenarios. 

How to Apply: Please refer to the following website for details on how to apply: https://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/infrastructureenvironment/