Caleb McKenna is a first year DPhil Student in the Environmental Fluid Mechanics research group at Oxford. His research focusses on design optimisation of floating offshore wind turbine substructures.
Caleb graduated from the University of Western Australia, studying a Bachelors Degree in Engineering Science with First-Class Honours, followed by a Masters of Professional Engineering in Mechanical Engineering. After working briefly in the offshore engineering industry, Caleb started his research degree at Oxford in October 2024. He is very passionate about engineering solutions to address climate change, and sees the development of offshore wind as integral to the energy transition. His aspiration is to improve the technical and economic viability of floating offshore wind as a large-scale renewable energy generation technology.
Research Interests
- Design optimisation of floater structures
- Frequency domain modelling of floating wind systems
- The application of genetic algorithms to design optimisations
- Linearisation of nonlinear hydrodynamic effects
Current Research Projects
(in progress) Geometry optimisation of floating wind floaters - starting with a simple axisymmetric single-body, we aim to use genetic algorithms within a multi-objective optimisation framework to optimise the geometry of a floater in the frequency domain.
