Welcome to New PDRA Dr Pál Schmitt

Pál is a marine engineer with research interests in fluid and structural dynamics. He was appointed as a Bryden Centre Research Fellow in January 2020 and is based at the Queen’s University Belfast Marine Laboratory in Portaferry, NI.

Pál graduated from TU Hamburg with a Diploma in Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture and then joined QUB for his PhD which he completed in 2013.

He has gained industry experience working for companies across the offshore industry, ranging from offshore contractors, a classification society and offshore energy device developers.

His academic research covers numerical and experimental design tools for marine renewable energy devices. During his PhD he developed a simulation environment based on OpenFOAM for the design of the Oyster wave power device. Since then he has continued work on OpenFOAM based simulations and expanded into tidal turbines and offshore wind but also developed novel tools for assessing the vibration of submerged bodies using CodeAster FEA and NEMOH BEM.

Beside simulations he is keen on experimental work, especially for the validation of numerical design tools, and has worked on wave tank and field testing campaigns using passive and active acoustic instruments and motion tracking.

Recently Pál participated in the Icure Lean Launch program and is now progressing commercialisation of his product idea, while developing his research idea on a novel numerical simulation approach for flexible structures like tidal or wind turbine blades.