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EDF posted doctoral offer 2026-184279 on 10 October for research at EDF R&D in Chatou and the Toulouse Institute of Fluid Mechanics. The three-year project would investigate air movement and hydrodynamic loading in pressurised conduits that carry reservoir water to lower turbines, focusing on the head valve used to isolate a conduit during shutdown, maintenance or an incident.
The offer says current evidence comes mainly from operating sites or scale models and proposes a stepwise experimental approach on one installation. It also identifies gaps in computational-fluid-dynamics models of flow interruption, especially their treatment of cavitation at high flow. The work is intended to support engineering tools and hazard studies; it is a research plan, not a reported result or validated new operating technology.