The deadline: 12.12.25

How to apply: https://uom.link/pgr-Apply-2425

For UK students

This doctorate for 3.5 years is open to home applicants (UK) and European Union students with a stable situation. The successful candidate will receive an annual tax -exempt at a Ukraine rate (20,780 pounds for 2025/26; according to the annual height), home tuition fees will be paid.

Exceptional candidates can also be seen abroad.

If you are currently headquarters abroad, please inform the supervisor of your site when calling first.

We recommend that you make the progress early as the advertisement will be removed as soon as the position is fill.

Electric trees are a preliminary degradation mechanism in polymer insulation that leads to the final failure of high voltage cables (HV). Although it is a phenomenon that was observed and studied for the first time for more than a century, the physical and chemical processes that govern the start and reproduction of trees are not adequately understood, which represents an important scientific and engineering challenge. This limits our ability to design insulation materials from the next generation for higher voltage applications across different sectors.

A basic reason for the progress in electric trees research is that experiments have been historically conducted without accurate control of environmental conditions, allowing variables to have a lot of influence on the growth of trees at the same time. For decades, the field has greatly focused on the perception of the nano structure of the trees after starting, instead of investigating the basic thermal dynamic forces that drive their spread. To address this basic challenge, a doctoral candidate will be part of a broader team to create a systematic framework, comb the use of control -subject tree growth test, thermodynamic modeling and advanced visual description on the site.

This doctoral project will investigate the basic factors that drive the growth of electric trees using this methodology. The research will be comprehensively compared to the precisely controlled conditions, including changing the surrounding gas, gas pressure, temperature and materials (from thermal to thermal plastic), modeling the growth rate using motor models as a function of those specified parameters and advanced visual description within the site to capture in the actual time to start the tree, and move to spread.

This project aims to provide a promising road as part of the broader research effort to achieve a clear understanding of this scientific challenge that dates back to a century, which turns it from a continuous engineering problem to a well -understood material phenomenon. Its success will provide basic visions needed to design high voltage insulation systems used in various application scenarios, allowing reliability and performance significantly by designing physics -based insulation materials.

Applicants must obtain a first degree (or equivalent) degree in the relevant engineering or scientific discipline (the higher second degree can be considered depending on the Bachelor/Master’s thesis project. The doctoral candidate is expected to start before September 2026.

To apply, please contact the supervisors; Dr. Chen – lujia.chen@manchester.ac.uk And Dr. Moveng Leo – mufeng.liu@manchester.ac.uk . Please include details of your current level of study, academic background and any related experience and insert a paragraph about your motives for studying this doctorate project.