Internship or Graduation: Thermal Battery Model

Within Damen, we are supporting the transition toward low and zero emission shipping by heavily investing in electrification. This includes developing modular battery systems, hybrid propulsion solutions, and efficient charging concepts. A key challenge is ensuring that battery systems are safe, reliable, and optimally sized for different vessel types and operational profiles. Accurate thermal modelling plays a central role in achieving this.

About us

The Research, Development & Innovation department of Damen helps the company to become the most sustainable and digitally connected shipyard in the world. We give support to the business in the development of an innovative product portfolio and offer pro-active advice with the aim of further improving the quality and performance of the Damen products and services.

The RD&I department is divided into Research, Development, and Enabling Technologies branches. You’ll join the RD&I Workboats team at Damen Gorinchem Development, working on an exciting range of vessels such as tugs, multipurpose workboats, high-speed craft, and city ferries. Our team of 10 colleagues with diverse backgrounds offers a supportive and energetic environment where you can learn, contribute, and make real impact.

The role

Your mission is to improve and validate an existing thermal model for an air-cooled battery pack using measurement data together with system identification and optimization techniques. The project focuses on three research themes:

• Lifetime: Higher average temperatures accelerate degradation, reducing capacity and increasing lifecycle cost.
• Safety: Poor thermal control can lead in extreme cases to thermal runaway, a self-accelerating chemical reaction that can propagate to other cells or modules.
• Battery Selection: Temperature predictions determine required cooling capacity, power limitations and guide decisions on battery type and overall pack size for a vessel. A reliable thermal model is essential to avoid over and under-design.

Key accountabilities

As an intern, you will:

• Process and clean raw measurement data
• Analyze thermal behavior
• Develop a thermal/electrical battery model
• Apply system identification to determine dynamic thermal parameters
• Implement and test an appropriate optimization method for parameter fitting
• Validate predicted module temperatures against experimental data
• Use the model to simulate temperature evolution for future vessels and operational profiles
• Provide insights into optimal battery usage to extend lifetime and improve safety margins

Skills & experience

At least several skills/experiences from the following list are required to be considered:

• Bachelor or Master student in Mechanical Engineering, Systems & Control, Applied Physics, Electrical/Maritime Engineering, or similar
• Affinity with modelling, system identification, and data analysis
• Proficient in Python or MATLAB
• Interest in battery systems, thermal management, and sustainable technology
• Communicates fluently in English

What we offer

• Academic level mentoring throughout the internship
• Internship compensation and travel allowance in line with company policy
• Hands on experience with enterprise AI adoption in a high impact environment
• A project with direct relevance to multiple business functions and future digital products
• Potential for internal rollout, and possibly a publication or conference contribution depending on results

Other

Due to housing issues we cannot accept international students that do not have accommodation in the Netherlands yet.