PhD Studentship - EPSRC - Developing Next-Generation Tools for Tidal Stream Turbine Array Design

The University of Manchester - Civil Engineering and Management

Application deadline: 31st May 2026

This 3.5-year PhD studentship is open to Home (UK) applicants. The successful candidate will receive an annual tax-free stipend set at the UKRI rate (£21,805 for 2026/27; subject to annual uplift), and tuition fees will be paid. We expect the stipend to increase each year. EU students with settled or pre-settled status and international student can apply but their application eligibility will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

The start date is October 2026.

Tidal stream power is a highly dense, predictable, renewable energy source. Following the successful operation of full-scale prototypes, ongoing efforts in the UK and globally are focused on scaling from single devices to multi-turbine farms to meet Net Zero commitments. As the sector moves toward multi-gigawatt commercial arrays, interactions between turbines, their wakes, and the surrounding flow increasingly determine overall farm efficiency and turbine survivability. Understanding these array-scale hydrodynamics is therefore critical to the effective design and operation of future commercial farms.

The interaction between surface gravity waves and tidal stream turbines is a critical design load condition. While loading on individual devices is now relatively well understood, existing array-scale investigations have largely assumed steady current conditions and neglected surface waves.

Crucially, the velocity deficits produced by tidal turbine wakes can refractively focus or deflect surface waves, analogous to the focusing of light by optical lenses. This directional focusing results in localised wave amplification that can adversely affect down-wave turbines. Despite imminent plans for large-scale deployment, this coupling of wave-current interaction and the feedback of refracted waves on local loading remains largely unexplored. Leaving this physical mechanism unresolved prevents an accurate assessment of the loading and therefore fatigue and design requirements, precluding a complete and assessment of the viability of planned projects.

This project will address this critical gap by developing a suite of rapid, physics-based design tools to capture wave transformation across turbine arrays and resulting loads on TSTs to inform array layouts. By combining, for example, wave ray tracing, analytical theory, and blade element momentum theory (BEMT), the research will predict local kinematics and the resulting implications for in-array device loading and fatigue.

The successful candidate will:

• Evaluate the influence of array configuration on within-array wave conditions, capturing the spatial footprint of wave amplification under real-world wave-current conditions.
• Assess the potential for array design and control strategies to modify, minimise, or even exploit (by focusing waves away from down-wave turbines) directional focusing effects.
• Determine the feasibility of exploiting shielding effects through strategic turbine placement and operation.
• Optimise array layouts to maximise overall farm performance and survivability.

Together, these developments will provide essential rapid design tools for modelling wave-current-turbine array interactions, enabling better-informed design and operational decision making for the first generation of tidal energy farms.

The standard academic entry requirement for this PhD is an upper second-class (2:1) honours degree in a discipline directly relevant to the PhD (or international equivalent) OR any upper-second class (2:1) honours degree and a Master’s degree at merit in a discipline directly relevant to the PhD (or international equivalent).

We strongly recommend that you contact the main supervisor, Dr Samuel Draycott – samuel.draycott@manchester.ac.uk for this project before you apply. Please include details of your current level of study, academic background and any relevant experience and include a paragraph about your motivation to study this PhD project.