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University of Bath PhD Project in Electronic and Electrical Engineering: Nature-Inspired Branching Networks for Cooling High-Power-Density Power Electronics and Energy Storage Systems

Project 1782 · University of Bath · Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering

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Save this opportunity and prepare around its actual requirements. Confirm deadlines and eligibility at the original source.

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Country or region
United Kingdom
Application deadline
2026-11-29 (confirm the exact time with the source)
Funding
This is a competitive Faculty of Engineering and Design studentship route for Home and Overseas applicants. Overseas awards are capped under UKRI policy, with no proportion stated. An award may cover tuition fees and a maintenance stipend (not an employment salary), plus £1,000 per year in training support; this is not personal living income. £21,805 is the 2026/27 stipend rate only; the personal 2027/28 rate is unknown. Engineering URSA guidance gives a general maximum of 3.5 years, while each person’s funded months are determined by the award. International students pay Student visa and Immigration Health Surcharge costs personally.

The research opportunity

University of Bath PhD Project in Electronic and Electrical Engineering: Nature-Inspired Branching Networks for Cooling High-Power-Density Power Electronics and Energy Storage Systems

Research question and doctoral tasks

The project asks how bio-inspired branching networks can cool compact power-electronic assemblies and battery modules while balancing hot spots, temperature uniformity, pressure loss and manufacturability. The notice sets out three stages:

  1. Build coupled electro-thermal-fluid models of nature-inspired cooling structures for battery modules and power-electronic assemblies.
  2. Use fast surrogate models to support a multi-objective optimisation framework balancing peak temperature, temperature uniformity, pressure drop and ease of fabrication.
  3. Additively manufacture selected designs, test them under realistic high-power and fast-charging conditions, and compare them with commercial cold plates.

These are proposed tasks, not completed results. The notice does not specify the battery or converter, duty cycle, specimen budget or achieved optimum. Equal flow, equal pressure drop and equal pumping power are different comparison conditions; surrogate and prototype results must be interpreted within their actual validation scope.

The work is based at the University of Bath, with collaboration involving the Universities of Sheffield and Aalborg. The notice does not promise a joint degree, fixed exchange period or personal additional funding. The formal route is the Electronic and Electrical Engineering PhD, REEE-AFM02; full-time study normally takes four years, with a two-year minimum and normal four-year maximum. Funding duration is separate.

Entry requirements and application

Applicants must hold or expect a UK First or 2:1 honours degree, or an international equivalent; a master's qualification is advantageous. The notice separately says the successful candidate should understand advanced materials, ideally with composite-material experience. Numerical modelling and experimental characterisation of structural materials are advantageous, as is a materials-science or chemistry background. Their relevance to this cooling project is unclear and should be confirmed with the enquiry contact. The notice does not state a separate mandatory power-electronics, CFD or programming qualification.

Non-UK applicants who are not currently studying in the UK must meet the English requirement by the application deadline; no exceptions are considered. The Electronic and Electrical Engineering PhD requires IELTS 6.5 overall with no component below 6. TOEFL scores are 90 overall and 21 in each component for tests before 21 January 2026; for tests on or after that date, 4.5 overall and 4 in each component. Tests normally need to be within 24 months of starting. A qualifying English-medium degree may support an individual exemption, usually subject to degree-recency or subsequent-residence rules; a Chinese medium-of-instruction letter is not automatic approval.

  • Apply through the University of Bath online form for the Electronic and Electrical Engineering PhD and select “University of Bath URSA” under “Funding Your Studies.”
  • Applicants may select no more than two projects. The notice's project title is “Nature-Inspired Vascular Cooling for High-Power-Density Power Electronics and Energy Storage Systems”; enter the full title in “PhD project title.” Use “Project 2 Title” and the second-choice supervisor field for a second project.
  • The course asks for two references, including one from the latest academic institution, a personal statement and intended-supervisor information. Its roughly 1,000-word proposal instruction concerns an applicant's own idea, not an automatic requirement for this advertised topic.

Dr Fang Duan is named for informal enquiries, but the saved notice does not clearly identify the formal lead supervisor; confirm the intended supervisor before completing that field. The saved notice does not specify whether, or for which supporting documents, English translations or certification are required; follow the formal course application instructions. The programme is ATAS-covered. China is not nationality-exempt, but this is not a ban on applying; any certificate requirement depends on the individual subject classification and offer.

The university encourages applications from under-represented groups. Applicants may explain circumstances that affected educational attainment in the form; a short paragraph at the end of the personal statement is recommended. If an applicant states on the form that they have a disability, the Disability Service will contact them to discuss support needs.

Funding and timing

This is a competitive Faculty of Engineering and Design studentship route for Home and Overseas applicants. Overseas awards are capped under UKRI policy, but no proportion is stated; selection does not guarantee an individual award. An award may cover tuition fees and a maintenance stipend (not an employment salary), plus £1,000 per year in training support; the training amount is not personal living income. £21,805 is the 2026/27 stipend rate only; the personal 2027/28 rate is unknown. Engineering URSA guidance gives a general maximum of 3.5 years, while each person's funded months are determined by the award. The usual four-year course does not imply four years of full funding. International students pay Student visa and Immigration Health Surcharge costs personally.

The notice lists 29 November 2026 as the application deadline; the saved Engineering URSA policy specifies 23:59 GMT that day. Current application availability has not been verified. If awarded, the expected start is 4 October 2027; a different date requires agreement with the intended supervisors and Doctoral College, and continued funding is not confirmed.

Research and application brief

Report generated: . This date does not confirm that recruitment remains open.

Information updated: . Recheck the original notice before applying.

Show report contents

University of Bath PhD Project in Electronic and Electrical Engineering: Nature-Inspired Branching Networks for Cooling High-Power-Density Power Electronics and Energy Storage Systems

The saved University of Bath notice describes a PhD project combining coupled electrothermal-fluid modelling, multiobjective optimisation and manufactured cooling-plate tests. The formal route is the PhD in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. Dr Fang Duan is named for informal enquiries (fd506@bath.ac.uk), but the saved notice does not clearly identify the formal lead supervisor. The project connects numerical design with physical validation, rather than focusing only on a predictive algorithm.

Current application availability has not been verified from the saved materials; individual award terms also remain unknown. A substantial question needs answering before committing an application: the notice describes advanced-materials and composite/structural-material experience and lists four protective-composite papers. Those topics do not directly match the cooling project. The same notice contains both passages. Ask Duan which materials expectations apply; the notice does not separately specify mandatory electrical-engineering or CFD experience. The funding route is competitive, and the advertisement does not confirm an individual award.

The four references concern impact-resistant composite laminates (Myronidis et al., 2025), graded hemp-core sandwich laminates (Boccarusso et al., 2024), structural impact protection (Elhawary et al., 2024), and shear-thickening-fluid composites (Pinto and Meo, 2017). Their authors should not be inferred to supervise the cooling project.

Research direction and field outlook

The scientific problem is the distribution of cooling capacity in compact power-electronic assemblies and battery modules. A channel layout can reduce a hot spot while making flow resistance or manufacturing more difficult. The useful question is therefore not simply whether a branching pattern looks more biological, but which geometries give defensible thermal and hydraulic gains under fair operating constraints.

The advertised first stage couples electrical heat generation, heat transfer and fluid flow. The second uses fast surrogate models and multiobjective optimisation to balance peak temperature, temperature uniformity, pressure loss and manufacturability. The third manufactures selected designs and compares them with commercial cold plates under representative high-power or fast-charging conditions. These are planned tasks, not completed demonstrations. The notice does not establish the eventual device, duty cycle, sample budget or commercial comparator.

A strong doctoral contribution would explain the trade-offs and validate them beyond the training cases. Equal flow, equal pressure drop and equal pumping power are different comparisons; an apparent thermal improvement obtained by spending more pumping energy is not an efficiency improvement. A surrogate should be checked against its underlying physical model and genuinely unseen geometries or operating conditions. Manufacturing tolerances, surface condition and repeatability can affect agreement between a nominal numerical geometry and a physical specimen. The project must decide which of these uncertainties it can actually measure.

External research shows that the general idea has precedents. A 2026 leaf-venation cold-plate study by Jishnu and colleagues compares a branching geometry with a diamond layout using steady three-dimensional conjugate finite-volume modelling. Its abstract reports pressure drops of 35.1 and 37.7 Pa and a performance evaluation criterion of 1.039 under its specified comparisons. Available evidence comprises the original abstract and indexed introduction, numerical approach, performance definitions, results opening and conclusions opening; the complete paper and supplementary information were unavailable. The work supports studying geometry-specific thermal–hydraulic trade-offs, not transferring its numbers to Bath prototypes or claiming experimental validation.

Evidence for a separate external 2026 open-access fin study covers selected methods, results and conclusion passages. Its air-cooling configuration is not a liquid vascular plate. It also illustrates why numerical results require critical reading: results and conclusion passages give 330 K, approximately 57 °C, while another conclusion statement describes operation below 35 °C. These temperature statements need reconciliation before adopting a safety or performance claim. Mesh and model checks alone do not establish physical pack validation. This is a reading limitation and consistency concern, not an independent verdict on the entire paper.

MAHLE publicly described a bionic battery cold plate in August 2023. That establishes earlier industrial interest; the manufacturer's performance claims are not independent benchmarks or evidence of Bath results. The notice's claim that only a handful of papers appeared in the last two years has not been independently verified by a systematic literature count. A credible thesis must establish a specific modelling, optimisation or validation gap rather than rely on a broad novelty slogan.

School, programme and training

The awarding institution is the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. The formal route is the Electronic and Electrical Engineering PhD, programme REEE-AFM02, within Engineering and Design. The current programme normally lasts four years, with a minimum of two and a normal maximum of four. Probation includes written and oral assessment, followed by thesis examination and a viva. Registration duration is separate from the funded duration.

Bath's IAAPS research environment spans electrification, batteries, digitalisation and propulsion across several transport sectors. It is relevant context for interdisciplinary work. It does not establish that this student has reserved access to an additive-manufacturing machine, a particular battery rig, industrial data or an industry placement. Doctoral development workshops provide broader research and transferable-skills training; the actual individual training plan remains to be agreed.

Bath is 125th overall in the QS 2027 table, compared with 132nd in 2026. These are institutional rankings, not measures of this cooling project or electrical engineering. Bath's institutional REF 2021 statement that 92% of research was world-leading or internationally excellent is similarly broad. The more useful decision evidence is the programme's assessment structure, access to thermal experimentation and the proposed supervisory coverage. Sheffield and Aalborg are described as collaborators in the notice, without a confirmed joint degree, reserved exchange period or additional personal funding.

Enquiry contact, team and publications

The saved institutional profile identifies Fang Duan as a Lecturer in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and IAAPS. The listed strengths include condition monitoring, diagnosis and prognostics, global optimisation and AI for power electronics. They support the computational and data-driven elements of the proposal. They do not, by themselves, establish a mature vascular-cooling laboratory or the identity of a thermal-fluid co-supervisor.

The evidence for three recent originals with Duan as a co-author is limited to complete institutional author abstracts and publication metadata. Full methods, results and discussion were unavailable, limiting assessment of implementation and robustness.

2022: fast-charging models under changing ambient conditions

Makeen and colleagues, Energy 2022, study fast charging under changing ambient temperature and humidity. The abstract combines neural-network classification/parameter estimation with Hammerstein–Wiener dynamic identification. Its 83.2% classification result, maximum 1% parameter-estimation error and 89.62% fit/1.1876% identification error describe different tasks. They cannot be merged into a universal sub-1% error. This is relevant to operating-condition-dependent modelling, not a demonstrated cold-plate design.

2023: competing objectives in charging-station operation

The same team's Energy 2023 charging-station paper compares hierarchical mixed-integer optimisation with a Markov-decision/reinforcement-learning approach. It provides evidence of optimisation experience and competing economic objectives. Station revenue and tariffs are not cooling efficiency, and its specific scenario does not validate geometric thermal optimisation. The November 2022 online date and February 2023 issue identify one paper.

2026: reducing input and computation in gearbox diagnosis

Huang and colleagues, Energies 2026, combine XGBoost-guided spectrogram pruning with a squeeze-and-excitation residual CNN for gearbox diagnosis. The abstract reports 97.81±0.33% accuracy under stratified five-fold evaluation on an eight-class, 2.2 kW rig dataset, with about 23% less training time. This is an adjacent example of reducing computational input and cost. It is not a temperature surrogate, unseen-motor validation or cooling experiment; cross-validation does not establish generalisation to independent operating domains.

These papers support an AI/optimisation and charging-modelling track record. Two address adjacent methods rather than vascular heat transfer, and three recent Duan vascular-cooling papers were not established. The external cold-plate and fin papers above are explicitly external context. A sensible interview question is who will provide detailed conjugate heat-transfer, additive-manufacturing and experimental thermal supervision.

Duan is a co-investigator on AI-Power, an Aalborg-led collaboration involving Bath and industrial partners. Its published period is September 2021 to August 2027, before the expected October 2027 PhD start. The project-level funding and partner list are not this student's award, renewed support or a guaranteed placement. Sheffield is not listed on that particular project record; the proposed new collaboration needs its own explanation.

Funding and living costs

The saved URSA policy invites Engineering and Design applications for October 2027. The deadline is 29 November 2026 at 23:59 UK time, which is GMT on that date; the individual notice supplies the date without a time. The expected project start is 4 October 2027, with alternatives requiring supervisor and Doctoral College agreement. Funding retention after a changed start is not confirmed.

Home and Overseas applicants may compete for tuition support, a maintenance stipend and up to £1,000 annual training support. International awards are capped without a project-level proportion. The current general Engineering and Design limit is up to 3.5 years, not a guaranteed personal 42-month award. The notice's £21,805 is a 2026/27 stipend reference, also consistent with the UKRI rate for that year; it is not the student's confirmed 2027/28 payment. Training money is not disposable living income. The individual award duration, future stipend and coverage if registration extends beyond funding remain unknown.

Published 2027/28 Engineering and Design Overseas research tuition is £31,350 per year. Continuing fees can increase by up to 8% annually. A tuition-covering award would meet the covered fee rather than add that sum to the student's living budget; an unfunded period can create a substantial exposure. Home rates await the relevant UKRI setting. Obtain the actual award letter before relying on complete fee coverage for the full degree.

Bath's dated 2025/26 budget totals £405 per week or £21,060 per year. Its table includes a £37 off-campus utilities line even alongside the halls description; removing that line gives an analyst's £368 comparison, not another official quotation. The same guidance gives approximately £230 weekly rent on a 51-week contract or £750 monthly off-campus rent before bills. None is a 2027 price or a housing guarantee. Visa, travel, deposits and initial setup require cash beyond routine weekly spending; a partner or child changes the budget substantially.

International students pay their own Student visa and Immigration Health Surcharge. Current published charges are £558 for the visa and £776 per year for the student surcharge, with the final upfront total depending on visa validity and part-year rules. Prices may change by 2027. A stipend-to-old-budget subtraction should not be presented as a guaranteed surplus.

Applicant fit and preparation

The notice requires an achieved or expected First or upper-second-class honours degree, or international equivalent; a Master's degree is an advantage. Its specific advanced-materials/composites paragraph remains unresolved. Do not turn a different public version into permission to ignore it, and do not infer an unadvertised mandatory CFD or programming qualification. Contact Duan with the cooling title and ask which background paragraph actually applies.

The university encourages applications from under-represented groups. Applicants may explain circumstances that affected educational attainment in the application form; the university recommends a short paragraph at the end of the personal statement. If an applicant states on the form that they have a disability, the Disability Service will contact them to discuss support needs.

The saved project notice does not specify whether, or for which supporting documents, English translations are required; applicants should follow the formal EEE course application instructions.

For a China-educated applicant, the current EEE programme accepts international equivalent qualifications and URSA explicitly considers Overseas applicants. This is a positive route in principle, followed by individual academic assessment and immigration requirements. The available official China research-degree index points to a first-class Bachelor's standard, with research experience or a research-containing Master's desirable. The direct current country body was not fully available for that research-degree passage. Taught-postgraduate percentage tables are not a doctoral cutoff, and a Master's degree is not an automatic waiver of project or country requirements. Supply the actual awarding institution, grades and research preparation for an admissions ruling.

Engineering's IELTS requirement is 6.5 overall with no component below 6. TOEFL taken before 21 January 2026 requires 90 overall and 21 in each component; tests on or after that date use 4.5 overall and 4 per component. Tests must normally fall within 24 months of starting. A solely English-medium degree from a non-majority-English country may support an individually approved exemption, generally subject to degree recency or specified subsequent residence; a Chinese medium-of-instruction letter is not automatic approval. The project expressly requires non-UK applicants not currently studying in the UK to meet English requirements by the funding deadline, without exceptions. General permission to apply before receiving scores does not override that rule.

Apply through the EEE PhD route, selecting “University of Bath URSA” under “Funding Your Studies”. A maximum of two projects in the same programme is allowed. Confirm the project’s lead supervisor with Dr Fang Duan before submitting. Enter the complete first-choice title in “PhD project title” and the confirmed lead supervisor’s name in “Name of intended supervisor at University of Bath”. For a second choice, use “Project 2 Title” and “Name of intended supervisor for 2nd choice project at University of Bath”. Incorrect fields can prevent consideration. The programme asks for two references, including one from the latest academic institution, a personal statement and intended-supervisor information. Its 1,000-word proposal requirement concerns an applicant's own idea; it should not automatically be added to this defined topic without checking.

The programme is covered by ATAS requirements. China is not nationality-exempt, but the actual certificate requirement depends on the assigned subject and offer. This is individual clearance, not a nationality exclusion. A licensed-sponsor offer and CAS support the Student visa route; neither admission nor clearance is guaranteed.

Risks and questions before applying

Prioritise this as a credible interdisciplinary opportunity subject to clarification, not a confirmed funded place. Ask Duan: which candidate requirements and references belong to this exact cooling project; who covers heat-transfer and manufacturing supervision; which rigs, specimens and baseline plates are available; how surrogate validation will separate fitting from unseen-condition testing; what Sheffield and Aalborg participation actually includes; and what the individual award covers in amount, months and completion fees.

The broader skills could lead towards thermal systems, battery/power-electronics modelling, simulation and optimisation roles. IAAPS' transport scope and MAHLE's primary industrial example support relevance. They do not establish placement rates, vacancies, salary premiums or a guaranteed career outcome. This project's value rests on achieving rigorous, physically checked design comparisons and receiving enough experimental supervision to do so.

Evidence and Sources

The three Duan originals are supported by complete institutional author abstracts and metadata; external papers have the selected-reading limits stated above. The budget and stipend refer to their stated historical years. The saved materials do not confirm present vacancy availability.

Research, team and reading scope

School and doctoral training

Funding, eligibility and costs

Sources

The listing may come from a university or recruitment platform. Check the notice and official sources in the report for current application requirements. View the recruitment source

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