Faculty/School

Faculty of Science

School of Mathematical Sciences

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Supervisors

Associate Professor Vivien Challis
Position
Associate Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Science

Overview

Piezoelectricity, which translates to “pressure electricity”, is the phenomenon in which certain materials convert mechanical energy to electrical energy, and vice versa. Such materials are common-place and are used in a variety of applications including sensor, actuator, and energy harvesting technologies.

The capabilities of such piezoelectric materials have not yet been fully realised. We plan to use computational structural optimisation to design new piezoelectric materials and components that may contribute to novel sensing technologies for robotics applications. Essentially, robots need stress sensors so they can determine how to move without damaging their components. This is the robot equivalent of humans being able to sense pain when they are over-stressing their body.

We will develop computational methods for the optimisation of piezoelectric materials and components for robotics sensing applications and are looking for students with an interest in computational modelling to undertake research in this area.

Research engagement

You will do some reading of the literature, spend time understanding and making changes to research code, visualising and collating results, and writing a report.

Research activities

You will work with your supervisor and other members of the research group who will support you during the project with regular meetings, and guidance. You will run our existing research code on high-performance computing infrastructure and code in new structural optimisation problems.

Outcomes

The specific project aims can be tailored to your study level. The topic can also be personalised to suit your individual interests and skills, ranging from numerical methods and high performance computing to more of a focus on applications in robotic sensing.

We expect to generate new results in structural optimisation and you will write these results up in a report.

Skills and experience

Ideally, you'll have some prior experience with MATLAB or other programming languages (Julia, Python, C or C++) and will be keen to learn more about programming in Julia, material modelling, computational methods and robotic sensing.

Start date

18 November, 2024

End date

21 February, 2025

Location

QUT Gardens Point campus

Additional information

You will likely be allocated a space on campus that you can work in over the course of your project, and we can organise access to QUT's high performance computing infrastructure.

Keywords

Contact

Dr Vivien Challis, vivien.challis@qut.edu.au