It's super rainy and grey outside. Perfect weather for the first day of my PhD studies, which will mostly involve sitting at my desk reading papers and solving problem sets, at least for the first few weeks. This morning my supervisor, Dr. Byron Byrne, gave me an overview of what other graduate students in the group are doing. Most in his group work on monopile foundations for offshore wind turbines. My goal this week is to get a handle on current research in the field of offshore geotechnical engineering. I'll start by making sure I can finish a problem set from a senior undergraduate course in soil mechanics. This is important not only so that I have solid foundation in the field (pun), but also so that I'll pass the interview stage of my "transfer of status" exam next fall, when they'll test my understanding of basic soil mechanics concepts. Fortunately the work is very similar to what we covered in Mechanics & Materials courses at MIT.
I learned about Abaqus Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software today, and have a feeling I'll be using it later on in my research. I'm also accumulating a knowledge bank of new acronyms, e.g., EDF is the French electricity giant, PISA is an organization for improving offshore wind turbine design in deeper waters, et al. One of my early projects may be modifying a piece of test equipment, changing the control system from displacement based to load based (and controls from Visual Basic to LabView). I'd also like to connect with the Global Ocean Commission, International Maritime Organization, and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Meanwhile, on slate for the rest of the day is reading about a dozen papers, titled " Helical Screw Piles as Foundations for Offshore Wind Turbines," "Investigating six-degree-of-freedom loading of shallow foundations on sand," and more. The underlying mechanics concepts are not new, but sand-specific concepts are (pore pressure, flow nets, etc.) are fairly new to me so I must review.
After work I get to look forward to poetry reading at the Rhodes's house, followed by drinks with the Archeological Society and then a pub night with the other Marshall Scholars. Oxford quickly turns you into a social butterfly!
I learned about Abaqus Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software today, and have a feeling I'll be using it later on in my research. I'm also accumulating a knowledge bank of new acronyms, e.g., EDF is the French electricity giant, PISA is an organization for improving offshore wind turbine design in deeper waters, et al. One of my early projects may be modifying a piece of test equipment, changing the control system from displacement based to load based (and controls from Visual Basic to LabView). I'd also like to connect with the Global Ocean Commission, International Maritime Organization, and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Meanwhile, on slate for the rest of the day is reading about a dozen papers, titled " Helical Screw Piles as Foundations for Offshore Wind Turbines," "Investigating six-degree-of-freedom loading of shallow foundations on sand," and more. The underlying mechanics concepts are not new, but sand-specific concepts are (pore pressure, flow nets, etc.) are fairly new to me so I must review.
After work I get to look forward to poetry reading at the Rhodes's house, followed by drinks with the Archeological Society and then a pub night with the other Marshall Scholars. Oxford quickly turns you into a social butterfly!
