Solid And Structural Mechanics - SoMe group

The group is involved in various research activities in the broad field of solids and structural mechanics with applications in civil and mechanical engineering, and beyond. 

Theoretical models are developed to describe the mechanics of materials, their limit conditions (damage, fracture, fatigue), mechanical interactions (delamination, contact mechanics) and the response to actions of different nature (temperature, light, electric/magnetic, fluid, etc.).  

Modern numerical tools (phase field, multiscale, multiphysics, DDT, peridynamics, etc.) and multidisciplinary approaches are used to describe the response of traditional building materials (concrete, steel, glass), as well as advanced materials and systems (architectured materials, matamaterials, polymers, soft materials, biotissues, layered and sandwich composites, carbon nanotubes, tensegrity structures). 

A research field, pursued during the last 20 years, regards the analytical/numerical/experimental study of problems addressed to the design and verification of structural elements made of glass. The topics range from probabilistic micro-mechanically motivated models for the glass strength, to the design of large structures. The interest is for: material glass characterization (testing methods, probabilistic mechanics, fracture mechanics, abrasion/corrosion, phase transformation of NiS inclusions); laminated glass plates (sandwich behaviour, rheological characterization, response under bending and torsion, buckling, impacts, bomb-blast resistance, post-glass-breakage response); insulated glass units (load sharing, environmental loads); thermoelastic characterization (climatic actions, thermal shocks).

Another activity regards the experimental characterization and the numerical modelling of Carbon Nano Tube (CNT)-based materials, in particular solution-spun CNT fibers, from the nano-scale (single CNT) to micro-scale (CNT fibers and aggregates) and the macro-scale (CNT-based structural elements, such as cables).

Instability of thin-walled structures has been investigated via numerical and experimental approaches with particular emphasis to the buckling of shells and to the wrinkling of soft membranes. Further research activities related to geometrically non-linear problems have been carried out on tensegrity structures; analytical and experimental methodologies have been proposed with relevant applications in the field of kinetic structures, soft robotics, and metamaterials.

A broad spectrum of activities (sensoring, structural analysis, signal processing, etc.) are carried out in the field of structural health monitoring for structural and damage identification with applications to civil engineering infrastructures.

Contact person: Andrea Spagnoli - andrea.spagnoli@unipr.it