RESEARCH
I do fundamental research on wave propagation in solids and its applications to Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technology. My research interests lie in the broad area including vibration-based and guided-wave-based SHM, ultrasonics, linear and nonlinear wave propagation, non-destructive evaluation, and in the dynamical modelling of complex materials, like composites, porous materials, brick/block masonries, granular materials which could benefit from a description in terms of non-classical continua and from multiscale and multifield modelling .
NONDESTRUCTIVE EVALUATION AND STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING
The dynamic response of structures can be exploited to obtain information on mechanical apects such as constitutive constants, damage, state of stress, loads applied. This requires the solution of the so-called "inverse problem" as it goes opposite way compared to the usual "direct problem", which involves determination of the dynamic response once given a structure whose mechanical parameters are known.
Ideas to be developed in a Msc or PhD thesis:
Identification of loads and impact location
Damage image reconstruction in plates (use of transducer arrays, embedding of mechanical models into Machine Learning algorithms)
Fluid dynamics reconstruction based on emissions (at the moment I am working on light emitted by Hydrogen and Helium plasma )
NONLINEAR WAVE PROPAGATION
Wave propagation exhibits nonlinear features in several cases like prestressed continua, hysteretic materials, no-tension granular materials, brick masonries with deteriorated mortar. When excited with a monochromatic wave, a nonlinear material responds with higher-order harmonics whose amplitude vary in space. This phenomenon may have applications in several fields such as identification of the state of stress, ultrasonic tomography, measurement of the neutral temperature of a rail.
Ideas to be developed in Msc or PhD thesis:
modelling the propagation of guided waves in materials with nonlinear constitutive laws
identification of the neutral temperature in a rail
ultrasonic tomography exploiting nonlinear response
WAVE PROPAGATION
IN NONCLASSICAL CONTINUA
IN NONCLASSICAL CONTINUA
Composite materials, phononic crystals and metamaterials are man-made materials wich can have extreme, unexpected and exotic properties, like negative Poisson ratio, zero thermal expansion, negative stiffness, band gaps, conversion of axial deformation into twist or cloaking. The behaviour of these materials is not anticipated by the classical continuum theory (Cauchy) but requires theories that retain memory of the material’s length scales at the microscale, like Cosserat and second-gradient continua (non-classical).
Ideas to be developed in MSc or PhD thesis:
sponge absorbing oil from the water surface
devices impeding either acoustic and vibration transmission (with band gaps)