I am Bart Ripperda and I’m a student of the Fusion group at the Applied Physics department. I finished my bachelor degree in mechanical engineering and then switched to both a master in physics and in mechanical engineering. I chose fusion as the subject for my masters project because it is very broad, fusion involves many aspects of engineering and physics and also has several social aspects (the energy problem). The fusion group is very internationally oriented and the teachers have a lot of connections abroad and that’s one of the things I like. I did my internship in Oxford at the MAST tokamak and I really enjoyed the experience of living and studying abroad at a large research facility.

Also the group has many master students, which makes it a sociable environment where you have loads of people around you that can help you. The teachers are also very accessible if you need some advice.

My project is a combination of the theoretical description of a turbulent flow in a fluid tank, that resembles the flow in a fusion reactor, and an engineering part about the control of this flow. In the end we want to actually build the tank and apply the control system to see if it works in practice. So here you can see the combination of theoretical as well as experimental and engineering aspects of fusion.