PhD Position in SureROB: Structural optimisation and sustainable manufacturing harmonic dr

Offer Description

Organisation/Company Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II Department Department of Industrial Engineering Research Field Engineering » Mechanical engineering Engineering » Materials engineering Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions PhD Positions Country Italy Final date to receive applications 15 Jan 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Berlin) Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 40 Offer Starting Date 1 Jul 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Horizon Europe - MSCA Reference Number DC1 Marie Curie Grant Agreement Number  Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Development of efficient, safe, green, and reconfigurable manufacturing systems requires seamless integration between software and hardware solutions, requiring cooperation between experts from different fields. The project aims to make advancements in green manufacturing systems through collaborative robots (CoBots), making them viable for SMEs. The field of robotics faces the challenge of a disconnect between experts from computer science that provide generic solutions and the end-users that work and interact with the hardware.

By bridging this gap to enable the development of lightweight, efficient, and sustainable CoBots, SureROB will holistically train skilled researchers to contribute to European manufacturing. Through a well-balanced consortium of renowned academic bodies and industrial partners from seven countries, SureROB will develop and benchmark industrially feasible solutions. The focus would be not only to make the manufacturing process sustainable but also address the sustainability of manufacturing CoBots themselves.

Green tools and techniques will be developed. An important target would be achieving up to 20% reduction in the weight of the robot's components (drives and arms), resulting in lower energy consumption without compromising on the system reliability and robustness. Structural and geometric optimisation of the drives and arms will be investigated to improve the dynamic behaviour and efficiency with software-based design solutions.

These will be supported with vibration control strategies working in sync with optimised path planning and condition monitoring strategies. Numerical and experimental evaluation of the developed solutions will be conducted for benchmarking them against the reference system. SureROB will address the cost and impact of existing technologies to make them economically feasible and eco‑friendly, and will actively disseminate the results, engage with the public, and promote open science.

A fundamental element of a harmonic drive is the transmission mechanism that utilizes elastic, thin-walled components to enable the gear meshing motion. The harmonic drive mechanism is widely used in precision transmission due to its high transmission ratio, lightweight design, and coaxial input and output transmission characteristics. The optimization of this mechanism, of the tooth profile, and material offers potential for improving the performance for these drives, as demonstrated by the journal papers in the last decade.

New manufacturing techniques can deal with the unique characteristics of the flex spline, that constitutes the primary element of each harmonic drive, by optimally addressing the requirement of torsional rigidity versus high radial flexibility.

The specific aim of this PhD program is to make use of a sustainable manufacturing approach (based on innovative 3D printing methodologies and the use of different materials with green characteristics) to reach an optimal shaping of the primary elements of a harmonic drive. Hence, the PhD candidate will base his program on an innovative and optimized design of these elements, on the successive realization of prototypes, and their testing to evaluate and benchmark the transmission accuracy, tooth profile precision, and (but not limited to) fatigue performance.

The project requires the candidate to undertake international mobility. 18 months of the research work will be performed…