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Master thesis (f/m/x): AI based surrogate model for seat and occupants in an aircraft cabin
Job Description
Req ID:  2117
Place of work:  Stuttgart
Starting date:  01.08.2025
Career level:  Student research project and final thesis
Type of employment:  Part time
Duration of contract:  Initially limited to six months

Remuneration: Remuneration is in accordance with the Collective Agreement for the Public Sector - Federal Government (TVöD-Bund)

Enter the fascinating world of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V.; DLR) and help shape the future through research and innovation! We offer an exciting and inspiring working environment driven by the expertise and curiosity of our 11,000 employees from 100 nations and our unique infrastructure. Together, we develop sustainable technologies and thus contribute to finding solutions to global challenges. Would you like to join us in addressing this major future challenge? Then this is your place!

The Institute of Structures and Design works on the development and optimization of materials and their processing and joining technologies, as well as new design approaches and the construction of full-scale demonstrators. Naturally, testing and validation in specialized test facilities and flight trials are also part of the daily work. The focus is on fiber-ceramic, polymer, and hybrid composite materials. The research of new multidisciplinary design tools and digital models forms the basis for hardware development.

What to expect

The primary research objective of the Structural Integrity Department is the design of lightweight aerospace structures to protect occupants during incidents and accidents with all kinds of aircraft and to ensure their survivability. This includes material and structural testing as well as numerical analyses ranging from individual specimens to the entire system. 

 

Your tasks

The thesis focuses on the development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based surrogate model to predict passenger injuries based on the interaction between aircraft floor structure and the seat. This AI based surrogate aims to decouple the study of an aircraft primary structure during a crash event from a more detailed investigation of the interaction of the seat and occupants, represented by ATDs (anthropomorphic test dummies). The work will mainly focus on AI topics, while the required dynamic FE models will be provided.

 

Specific tasks are:

  • literature review of AI state-of-art in the field of FE models and occupants safety
  • identification of suitable parameters to correlate floor to seat interactions with resulting occupant injuries
  • training of AI algorithm to predict the injury criteria based on selected floor pulses
  • evaluating the accuracy of different sampling and AI algorithms.

 

Your profile

  • proficient in English 
  • experience in the field of AI 
  • knowledge of aircraft structures and experience with the Finite Element Method
  • programming skills in Python

 

We offer

DLR stands for diversity, appreciation and equality for all people. We promote independent work and the individual development of our employees both personally and professionally. To this end, we offer numerous training and development opportunities. Equal opportunities are of particular importance to us, which is why we want to increase the proportion of women in science and management in particular. Applicants with severe disabilities will be given preference if they are qualified.

We look forward to getting to know you!

If you have any questions about this position (Vacancy-ID 2117) please contact:

Nathalie Toso 
Tel.: +49 711 6862 564 
Apply now