Academic Supervisor:
Sebastian Gutierrez.

Group of Tecnun:
Control and Robotics Group of the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials from TECNUN.

area subject:
Automation and Electronic Systems Engineering.

Description and objectives:

The goal of this PFG is to align with the evolution towards Industry 4.0 in the field of robotics, which is revolutionizing the way companies design, produce and distribute their products. In this context, advances in robotics are playing a key role by enabling the integration of a wide variety of sensors and actuators into industrial robots. The combination of the Internet of Things (IoT), cyber-physical systems and cloud computing provides these robots with the ability to efficiently collect and analyze data, facilitating informed decision-making and the optimization of manufacturing processes.

This project focuses on the implementation of an adaptive gripper that integrates as a slave device with a master industrial robot, which is controlled by a BECKHOFF automaton. Using the protocol EtherCAT, it seeks to leverage these advanced technologies to improve automation and optimize system performance in modern manufacturing environments.

Academic Supervisor:
Enrique Castaño Carmona

Division CEIT:
Advance Powder Metallurgy and Laser Manufacturing Group

area thematic:
Computing, modeling and simulation

Description and objectives:
The machining of materials using ultra-short pulse lasers is a very recent technology development and opens multiple possibilities in the field of functional surfaces, such as low friction coefficient surfaces in wind turbines or anti-icing surfaces in aeronautics. 

Currently, Ceit is leading a European project in which one of its objectives is to develop a simulation software for the machining process with this subject of lasers. The mathematical modeling of the process is already well advanced, as well as its numerical implementation.
The task of this PFG will be to design and develop the graphical interface with the Username of the simulation program so that its use is easy and intuitive. The student will apply and extend his knowledge of Python programming, GUI (Graphic User Interface) and design UX/UI (User Experience/User Interface) to achieve an interface that allows Username an attractive experience of the simulation program.

Academic Supervisor:
Xabier Zubizarreta Iriarte.

Division CEIT:
data analysis and information management.

area subject:
Systems engineering.

Description and objectives:
Dynamic modeling of large systems (e.g., digital twins of a railway infrastructure - or a water system) is highly complex and consists of a number of sub-models (in the case of railroads, e.g., turnouts, tracks, vehicles, etc.) that are built using various methodologies and simulation software.

These digital twins represent a breakthrough in the development and optimization of new infrastructures, reducing costs by being able to replace physical subsystems with their digital twin, and thus sweeping a much larger number of configurations and parameter spaces at a much lower cost.

The main challenges for the efficient development of digital twins are their high complexity, computational cost and heterogeneity of simulation tools used. The task of this PFG will be to develop a modular and highly scalable digital twin modeling system to reduce the impact of the three factors mentioned above. For this purpose, it is foreseen to make use of highly parallelizable computational tools together with a container subject that encodes and standardizes the execution of the submodels of a digital twin.

Academic Supervisor:

Aitor Cazón

Responsible for project

Iñigo Puente Urruzmendi

area o department from Tecnun:

Mechanical Engineering and Materials

Description and objectives:

There are several external factors that influence the mechanical behavior of materials, one of the most important of which is temperature. The goal of this work is to design and manufacture a temperature controlled chamber adaptable to the universal testing machine located at department of Mechanical Engineering and materials of Tecnun, in order to evaluate the mechanical behavior of different materials through tensile and flexural tests at different temperatures.

deadline for completion of project: June 2024.

Academic Supervisor:

Tomás Gómez-Acebo

department Tecnun:

Mechanical Engineering and Materials / Chair de Transición Energética Fundación Repsol-Universidad de Navarra

Description and objectives:

Analysis on the basis of cost and energy efficiency of the different alternatives of hydrogen carriers in the storage and transport of H2 over long distances. Evaluation of the alternative of hydrogen transport in the form of ammonia, considering the stages of synthesis, storage, transport and recovery of hydrogen at the point of use. Advantages/Challenges. Comparative analysis versus transport of compressed hydrogen or liquid hydrogen.

Academic Supervisor:

Tomás Gómez-Acebo

department Tecnun:

Mechanical Engineering and Materials / Chair de Transición Energética Fundación Repsol-Universidad de Navarra

Description and objectives:

Analysis based on cost and energy efficiency of the different hydrogen carrier alternatives in the storage and transport of H2 over long distances. Evaluation of the alternative of hydrogen transport in the form of methanol, considering the stages of synthesis, storage, transport and use as a hydrogen carrier or as an energy carrier. Advantages/Challenges. Comparative analysis versus ammonia.

Academic Supervisor:

Tomás Gómez-Acebo

department Tecnun:

Mechanical Engineering and Materials / Chair de Transición Energética Fundación Repsol-Universidad de Navarra

Description and objectives:

Analysis based on cost and energy efficiency of the different alternatives of hydrogen carriers in the storage and transport of H2 over long distances. Evaluation of the alternative of hydrogen transport in the form of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHCs), considering the stages of hydrogenation, storage, transport and dehydrogenation. Advantages/Challenges. Comparative analysis of existing state-of-the-art alternatives considering costs and energy efficiency.

Academic Supervisor:

Tomás Gómez-Acebo

department Tecnun:

Mechanical Engineering and Materials / Chair de Transición Energética Fundación Repsol-Universidad de Navarra

Description and objectives:

Analysis on the basis of cost and energy efficiency of the different alternatives of hydrogen carriers in the storage and transport of H2 over long distances. Evaluation of the alternative of hydrogen transport and storage in solids (metal hydrides, carbon nanotubes, MOFs, etc.). State of the art. Advantages/Challenges.

Description and objectives:

The wood industry generates a large amount of leftover materials, both wood and components in good condition that are not currently being used or properly utilized.

This project has as goal the improvement of the circularity of the activity of the companies associated to Arozgi that work with wood, through the industrial symbiosis and the development and implementation of a catalog of products and projects in the Circular Market platform, developed by Tecnun.

The phases that will be carried out to reach goal are as follows:

• Analysis and identification of resources generated by the companies (products, wastes, components, by-products) but with potential value. This analysis will include both the actual resources and the identification of the best available techniques for their valorization.

• Evaluation of these resources to facilitate their use, including them in a archive in CircularMarket.

• design promotion and actions necessary to stimulate the use of such waste as products for other companies and the promotion of symbiosis between them.

Academic supervisor:

Carmen Jaca

area thematic:

Sustainability and Economics Circular

area o department:

Industrial Organization Engineering.

Academic supervisor:

Ainara Rodríguez - Isabel Ayerdi

Division CEIT:

Materials and Manufacturing. Advanced Manufacturing in Powder Metallurgy and Laser Group.

Description and objectives:

Laser functionalization of surfaces is an approach widely used in a wide variety of applications and sectors, as it allows to provide final products with added functionalities, including, among others, decorative effects, the ability to repel liquids or improve the adhesion of coatings. At the moment Ceit is developing an international project of research and development in this last field, whose goal is to improve the adhesion of antibacterial and antiviral coatings to high traffic objects such as handles, switches or push buttons.

In the framework of this project in cooperation, a TFG is proposed whose goal is the design and implementation of a test bench for the characterization of the surface properties of the manufactured samples, among which are the improvement of adhesion, hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity characteristics or optical properties among others. In addition to the above, it will be necessary to implement an intelligent processing system for the data obtained by the measuring elements.

Academic supervisor:

Yago Olaizola

Division CEIT:

Materials and Manufacturing. Advanced Manufacturing in Powder Metallurgy and Laser Group.

Description and objectives:

Transparent materials are currently used in a multitude of applications in which their optical properties are particularly relevant: lenses, devices for optical communications, smart glasses or optical sensors, among others. In this context, the characterization of the optical properties is a point core topic in the development of the devices.

The goal of this project will be to design and implement an optical microscopy system, starting from different optical and mechanical elements, for the analysis of certain properties of transparent materials. After the validation of the equipment, we will proceed to study the optical behavior of this substrate subject after different laser engraving processes. In parallel, it will be necessary to implement an intelligent processing system for the data obtained by the measurement devices.

Academic supervisor:

Gemma García Mandayo

Division CEIT:

Materials and Manufacturing. Advanced Manufacturing in Powder Metallurgy and Laser Group.

Description and objectives:

The project is framed within the development of an innovative system for the measurement of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and coagulation, for application in clinical diagnostics. The main purpose of the system is to provide results of ESR and/or blood coagulation in a minimum time, with a minimum amount of sample and using sustainable materials, offering significantly higher performance than the devices currently available in the market, and thus allowing a faster and earlier diagnosis of pathologies such as infections, tumors or autoimmune diseases.

The goal of project is the optimization of the sample characterization processes, developing a test bench and performing tests to improve the performance of the device.

Academic supervisor:

Ion Irizar

Division CEIT:

data analysis and Information Management

area thematic:

Control

Description and objectives:

In many industrial processes there are variables that, being of great interest for decision making, cannot be measured directly by sensors. However, sometimes these variables can be observed indirectly by relating them to other measurable variables. The Kalman filter is precisely an observer that allows observing non-measurable variables using dynamic mathematical models involving measurable and non-measurable variables.

The task of this GFP will be to use a simulator of a water treatment plant to develop an observer capable of estimating in real time the concentration of ammonium and nitrate in the plant. Matlab/Simulink and/or Python will be used to realize the project .

Academic supervisor:

Itxaro Errandonea

Division CEIT:

data analysis and Information Management

area thematic:

Artificial Intelligence

Description and objectives:

Classical automatic control is giving way to new, more sophisticated control techniques based on artificial intelligence, such as Reinforcement Learning techniques.

The task of this PFG will be to use a water treatment plant simulator and apply Reinforcement Learning techniques to design an automatic control strategy that adjusts the oxygen level to keep the ammonium level close to a setpoint of reference letter. Matlab/Simulink and/or Python will be used to perform the project .

Academic supervisor:

Itxaro Errandonea

Division CEIT:

data analysis and Information Management

area thematic:

Artificial Intelligence

Description and objectives:

Many real industrial processes can be mathematically formulated using complex mechanistic models composed of nonlinear differential equations. Although these models are very useful for carrying out studies of design and operation, their handicap is their high computational cost which makes them unfeasible for use in real time decision making.

With the advent of Deep Learning techniques, proposals have emerged to reduce the complexity of these models and thus the computational cost. The task of this PFG will be to use the technique known as "physics informed neural networks" to obtain a reduced model of a water treatment plant. The Python environment will be used to carry out the project .

Academic supervisor:

Itxaro Errandonea

Division CEIT:

data analysis and Information Management

area thematic:

Artificial Intelligence

Description and objectives:

Water treatment plants are subject to increasingly stringent operational requirements requirements. It is no longer sufficient to comply with the quality of the treated water, but it is also necessary to do so with the minimum energy consumption. To achieve this, the operators of these processes need to have adequate information to enable them to make better decisions.

The task of this PFG would be to use an already developed WWTP simulator to generate data sets that collect its historical operation. These data sets will then be used to evaluate different Machine Learning classification algorithms with the goal in order to predict the operational state of the process. The algorithms will be programmed in Python.

Academic supervisor:

Leticia Zamora Cadenas - Iker Aguinaga Hoyos.

Division CEIT:

Information and Communication Technologies. Intelligent Systems for Industry 4.0 Group.

area thematic:

Telecommunication/Industrial Engineering

Description and objectives:

Indoor location systems are a booming element in recent years. Whether using radiofrequency technologies, inertial sensors or artificial vision systems, the location of objects or people in interior spaces is an element core topic in many applications (tracking of parts, access to security areas, tracking of people, augmented reality, etc.).

To determine and evaluate the accuracy of a location system, the most common method is to measure guide a number of control points or tests in a controlled environment to determine the accuracy of the system. However, this subject measurement is always subject to measurement errors, human error, and the impossibility of tracking a moving element in real time. Another widespread option, especially when the accuracy is to be evaluated dynamically, is to resort to cost-effective systems that allow the creation of the real path or "ground truth", such as, for example, vision tracking systems. However, it is not always possible to deploy this type of system subject , or the economic means to do so are not always available. Therefore, being able to evaluate the accuracy of indoor positioning systems at a low cost is still a problem that researchers and companies are trying to solve.

Currently Ceit has a line of research associated with positioning systems for indoor spaces, in which it works with various companies to provide solutions to their needs. This is why the need for a ground truth system that is easy to install and not too expensive was born.

The task of this GFP would be to develop a ground truth system, using virtual/augmented reality systems, for subsequent use in evaluating the accuracy of the proprietary indoor location system Ceit. HTC Vice, Oculus Quest and Hololens 2 hardware are available for the development of this system using the Unity3D programming platform. The candidate must have programming skills in C# or similar languages such as C++ or Java.

Academic Supervisor: Miguel Martínez-Iturralde.

Division CEIT: Electric Vehicle and Smart Grids.

area subject: Electrical Engineering.

Description and objectives: In recent years there has been an exponential growth in aeronautical applications related to small electrically propelled vehicles: drones, flying taxis, vertical take-off vehicles (VTOLs), etc. In order to obtain electric flying vehicles with a practical range, it is essential that the weight of their components be kept to a minimum. In the case of electric motors, this means increasing the power density above the values of current solutions.

In this PFG we want to design a high power density motor for application in drones and small electric aircraft. The student will handle professional tools for the design and simulation of electrical components and will work in all the areas involved in developing a system: electromagnetic, thermal, mechanical, etc.

Academic Supervisor: Miguel Martínez-Iturralde.

Division CEIT: Electric Vehicle and Smart Grids.

area subject: Electrical Engineering.

Description and objectives: The development of hybrid and all-electric aeronautical applications is a reality, with numerous projects that have demonstrated on a small scale the feasibility of a quieter and more environmentally friendly aeronautics. In this sense, the major players in the electric sector (Airbus, Boeing, Rolls-Royce, etc.) are devoting great efforts to the electrification of commercial aircraft.

One of the challenges for the development of electrically powered aircraft is related to the design of high voltage electrical insulation systems that can operate at high altitudes, where air pressure is minimal and the risk of electrical discharges is higher. Currently, Ceit is involved in a European project to develop insulation systems that will be applicable in tomorrow's electric aircraft.

The task of this PFG would be to simulate aircraft electrical systems using commercial finite element software and obtain criteria from design for subsequent application to electric aircraft.

Academic Supervisor: framework Satrústegui.

Division CEIT: Electric Vehicle and Smart Grids.

area subject: Electrical Engineering.

Description and objectives: The noise generated by electric motors is becoming increasingly important due to the fact that it is embedded in systems where comfort is a very important aspect (e.g. electric cars). In this sense, this PFG tries to characterise the noise in an electric motor by performing a multiphysical analysis, starting by characterising the machine at an electromagnetic and thermal level and then developing a mechanical analysis that results in obtaining the noise generated at different levels of torque and rotational speed.

Academic Supervisor: Jesús Paredes.

Division CEIT: Electric Vehicle and Smart Grids.

area subject: Electrical Engineering.

Description and objectives: During the last decade, many of the aircraft auxiliary systems (pneumatic, hydraulic and mechanical) have been replaced by electric or hybrid actuators, due to incentives for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the reduction of operation and maintenance costs. This has led to a considerable increase in the electrical power installed in aircraft.

Traditionally, the turbines were started by a pneumatic system and the energy needed to power the aircraft's electrical systems was produced by generators coupled to the turbines. Today, the two systems have converged into a single electrical machine capable of working as both an engine and a generator. These systems include aircraft turbine starter/generators. The increasing demand for electrical energy and the limited space for starter/generators make it necessary to increase the power density of these machines.

The size, and therefore the weight and cost, of an electrical machine is primarily determined by the heat extraction and temperature limit of the materials used in its manufacture. Oil cooling systems have promising characteristics. Among all the oil cooling systems (spray, oil-dripping...), we intend to address in this project the oil-flooded stator systems.

The goal of this project is that the student are familiar with simulation tools fluid and cooling systems and to draw conclusions in order to optimize oil cooling systems for aircraft engines.

Academic Supervisor: Gurutz Artetxe.

Division CEIT: Electric Vehicle and Smart Grids.

area subject: Electrical Engineering.

Description and Objectives: Induction heating is an efficient and fast method of generating heat. It can be employee in various applications where tempering, brazing or melting of metals is required. CEIT is interested in developing computational tools (based on a set of previously developed tools) for use in the design of induction heating systems for formwork. The goal of this project is to model the electromagnetic and heating behavior of a formwork heating system and to perform optimization studies with them in order to carry out the design of a practical case.

summaryThe goal of project is the development and fabrication of a directed illumination system. This system will be mounted on a camera and will allow to record the specimens at the same time as they are mechanically tested. The system to be developed has to illuminate the specimen to be filmed from several points simultaneously. Likewise, it must be possible to modify the light sources in guide by means of an arduino. During the project , parts have to be designed and manufactured by 3D printing, LEDs have to be mounted on the manufactured parts and an arduino has to be programmed and connected to be able to control the switching on and off of the light sources.

profile of the student: Ideally a student of design, industrial technologies, mechanical or biomedical engineering. Experience in arduino programming and design 3D CAD would be an asset.

Application: Send CV, along with academic record and a paragraph of about 300 words of motivation explaining the suitability of your profile for the realization of this project.  

Supervisor of project: Dr. Javier Aldazábal

deadline and resolution: Students who wish to apply must do so before the end of October and the selection of candidates will be made in November in order to start in December or January.

• profile/Degree: Industrial Technologies, Mechanics, Electricity, Industrial Electronics.
• Academic Supervisor: Juan Carlos Ramos.
• department/area: department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials / area of Thermal and Fluid Engineering.
• Description: The aim is to solve by means of the Finite Difference Method a thermal model of the generation and conduction of heat in the core and coils inside a transformer. The equations of the model and the solution by the iterative Gauss-Seidel method will be implemented in Matlab. Heat transfer issues will be applied. For further information please contact the professor.

• Academic Supervisor: Luis Matey

• Title: design of a laparoscopic device for large tumor operations.

• area/department Ceit /Tecnun:
  department of Mechanics / Area of design

• profile recommended: Mechanical Engineering, design and development Product Engineering, Industrial Technologies Engineering, Biomedical Engineering.

• Description and Objectives:
  The project aims to analyze and propose alternatives for aspirations of large tumors using minimally invasive techniques. The scope of the project aims to prospect and proposal of a design that allows the tumor to be sealed with guarantees (without rupture) so that it can be aspirated without loss of tumor cells.

• area/department Ceit /Tecnun/ :CEIT - Vision and Robotics

• Title: Image analysis for dimensional control of industrial parts

• Academic Supervisor: Diego Borro

• profile recommended: Industrial Technologies Engineering

• Description and Objectives:
  The goal of the project is to analyze in 3D industrial parts to reconstruct the geometry and make a dimensional control (check if the geometry meets the designed tolerances). Before analyzing the image, it will also be necessary to study the specific application to choose the optimal hardware components (luminaire, optics, laser and camera).

• Offer active only when laboratories can be attended in person.

• area/department Ceit /Tecnun/ : CEIT - Vision and Robotics

• profile recommended: Industrial Technologies Engineering

• Academic Supervisor: Diego Borro

• Title: Image Analysis for Defect Detection in Industrial Parts

• Description and Objectives:
  The goal of the project is to make use of the tool Inspect Express (from Teledyne Dalsa) to analyze in 2D industrial parts and find defects. This tool allows to program the image analysis algorithms in a visual way through its graphical interface. Before analyzing the image, it will also be necessary to study the specific application to choose the optimal hardware components (luminaire, optics and camera).

• Offer active only when laboratories can be attended in person.

• area/department Ceit /Tecnun/ :area of Mechanics of Materials - CEIT

• area subject: Mechanics of Materials

• profile recommended: Industrial Technologies Engineer

• Academic Supervisor: Nerea Ordás

• Title: Development of Copper matrix composites reinforced with Graphene, with increased thermal conductivity. Screening of manufacturing routes.

• Description and Objectives:
  The objective of this Project is to explore different manufacturing routes of Cu matrix composites reinforced with different kinds of graphene produced by Graphenea, to obtain a copper based material with improved thermal conductivity in the in-plane direction, compared to pure Cu metal. Such manufacturing routes will be based in the powder metallurgy route: mechanical alloying/mixing of powders, moulding and sintering by hot press.
  Coating of graphene with certain elements to improve the thermal conductivity of the Cu-graphene interface will be also explored.

• area/department Ceit / Tecnun: area of Thermal and Fluid Engineering - department from Mechanical Engineering (TECNUN)

• area thematic: Mechanical Engineering

• profile recommended: Degree en Ingeniería en Tecnologías Industriales, Degree en Mechanical Engineering, Degree en Ingeniería en design Industrial y development de Productos

• Academic Supervisor: Gorka Sánchez Larraona

• Title: Simulation of flow and heat transfer in curved ducts. Application in the cooling of gas turbine blades.

• Description and Objectives:
  The project consists of studying the flow and heat transfer that occurs in circular and square section ducts when they are bent 180º forming a U. For this purpose, three-dimensional simulations will be carried out using the ANSYS Fluent code and the results obtained will be compared with experimental measurements. The case in which the ducts rotate at high speed with respect to an axis will also be considered. This case has a direct application in the cooling of gas turbine blades.

• area thematic:
  Materials

• area/department Ceit /Tecnun:
  department of Materials - Ceit

• Description and Objectives:
  When generating virtual microstructures for computational simulations of polycrystalline materials it is very common to use a splitting (or tessellation) of the volume to be simulated using Voronoid techniques. This tessellation subject is usually done by randomly placing seeds to define the grains. This total randomness produces unequal equiaxed grains. The present project aims to study the randomness-size distribution relationship. The results of the project will allow the generation of polycrystalline materials with predefined grain size distributions, and not random, as it is usually the case. It will also be possible to generate inhomogeneous grains, with elongated or flattened shapes.

• profile recommended:
  Given the nature of project, it is recommended for any profile as long as you have some basic programming knowledge.

• Academic Supervisor:
  Javier Aldazabal Mensa

• Title:
  Study of grain size distributions in three-dimensional Structures using Voronoid tessellations.

• area thematic:
  Materials

• area/department Ceit /Tecnun:
  department of Materials - Ceit

• Description and Objectives:
  There is currently an interest in the use of magnesium particles in the reinforcement of materials employee for bone tissue regeneration. The geometry of these particles is not spherical, which makes it necessary to be able to replicate these geometries in a computer in order to simulate the behavior of the material.
  The goal of the project is the geometrical study and the generation of an algorithm capable of generating non-spherical particles, as well as the study and obtaining of their geometrical characteristics.

• profile recommended:
  Given the nature of project, it is recommended for any profile as long as you have some basic programming knowledge.

• Academic Supervisor:
  Javier Aldazabal Mensa

• Title:
  Generation of non-spherical geometries for the simulation of Magnesium reinforced composite biomaterials.

Academic supervisor:

Andoni Irizar

department Tecnun/Division CEIT:

CEIT. Materials and Manufacturing Division

area thematic:

Electronic systems

Description and objectives:

In today's industrial processes it is increasingly necessary to monitor the manufacturing process and the quality of the components resulting from the process. There are a wide variety of methods that allow such monitoring in real time, that do not require separating the parts from the rest for analysis and that do not damage the parts in the process. The most commonly used inspection techniques are those using electromagnetic fields, ultrasonic signals and machine vision. This project deals with ultrasonic techniques. The Ceit has its own ultrasonic signal test bench that allows to generate and capture ultrasonic signals in a simple way from a PC. The goal of project will consist of making a proposal of design of a miniaturized test bench (for example, the size of a Raspberry). As a comparison, the current design occupies the size of a Desktop computer. It would involve making a block diagram of the system, making a selection of components including the processing platform to be used and the components of the power source . Finally, it will be necessary to estimate the consumption and cost of the final equipment.

Academic supervisor:

Jorge Juan Gil.

department Tecnun/Division CEIT:

CEIT. Intelligent Systems for Industry 4.0 Group.

area thematic:

Systems and Control Engineering

Description and objectives:

So far the control concepts are shown on the blackboard, by means of simulations or with videos. For the Control Engineering subject we want to build a mechanical control system (two pendulums coupled with springs) to be used for teaching purposes: to show in class the different behavior of the system before several controllers. To ensure portability, the system will be controllable through USB by means of an ARDUINO card . In a previous project the mechanical system has been built. In the proposed project several controllers will be programmed in C, in particular, a proportional-integral (PI) controller that allows "teleoperation" (that the Username moves one of the pendulums and the other one follows its movement without error in permanent regime).

Academic supervisor:

Itxaro Errandonea

department Tecnun/Division CEIT:

ICT Division

area thematic:

Mathematical Optimisation

Description and objectives:

The optimal facility location problem (FLP) consists of selecting, from among all potentially feasible locations, those that are the best considering that these facilities must satisfy the demand from different geographically distributed points. When selecting the issue of optimal facilities and their location, the goal is usually to minimize some individual criterion such as transportation costs or even several criteria at the same time (operating costs of each facility, transportation costs, environmental impact, etc.).

The project CircRural 4.0 is a European project whose general goal is to implement in rural areas wastewater and agri-food waste management models that seek to prioritize energy optimization and resource recovery. To this end, the project proposes first of all automatic control solutions to improve the energy efficiency of existing wastewater treatment plants. In addition, project proposes the construction of a centralized facility to manage the waste generated by wastewater treatment plants and agri-food industries, and to extract valuable products such as biomethane and fertilizers.

In the framework of project, the solution proposal is going to be studied for the province of Badajoz, characterized for being an area of great geographical extension, where the purification facilities are small and very dispersed, and where the agro-industrial activity is relevant. In this sense, an important goal of project is to determine the optimal location of the centralized resource recovery facility. For this purpose, it is proposed to develop an optimization tool that, based on information collected from both the wastewater treatment plants (location, size, waste production, etc.) and the agri-food industries (location, waste production, seasonality, etc.), automatically calculates the issue number of facilities needed, their size and the location of each one of them.

The scope of the present PFG offer would consist of the development of this optimization tool . The tool could be programmed in Excel, Matlab, or any free programming software such as Python or R. The tasks that the student would perform would be:

• Literature review of FLP (Facility Location Problem) optimisation problems and most common optimisation algorithms.
• Mathematical formulation of the optimization problem for the use case of project CircRural
• Solving the formulated problem using a heuristic optimisation algorithm
• Analysis of results

The Structures lattice are Structures formed by struts with various applications in the aeronautical, aerospace or biomedical sector among others. These Structures are manufactured by Additive Manufacturing due to their complex geometry and dimensions (strut diameter: 0.2 to 0.5 mm).

However, there are a number of geometric imperfections during the manufacturing process. Instead of taking these geometric imperfections into account, another common practice is to consider these imperfections in the model of the material. This requires strut testing to obtain that model of material that takes the imperfections into account.

The goal of this project is to design and manufacture the necessary tools for tensile testing of these struts with different diameters.