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Venue MSG-024/025, Bernal Institute.
ABSTRACT
By virtue of their high stiffness and strength-to-weight ratios, thin-walled composite shell structures are common essential components of advanced aerospace, naval, and automotive engineering structures. Furthermore, the introduction of variable-stiffness (VS) composites gave the designer a new way of tailoring the performance of laminated composites by changing the lamination angle at the ply level within the planform of the structure. When it comes to the design and analysis of such laminates, standard mesh-based analysis methods often require a discretization of the fibre angle variation as an elementwise constant value, making the solution even more mesh-size dependent, while requiring ad-hoc mesh data preparation routines. This aspect makes mesh-less techniques quite appealing, since in such methods no further approximations need to be introduced to model VS composite layups, and the fibre angle variation can be expressed as a continuous function within the integration domain.
Among various mesh-less approaches, the Ritz method has been successfully applied to many static and dynamic problems. In this talk, the advantages and limitations of a Ritz approach for the analysis of lightweight composite structures will be discussed, with specific reference to linear and nonlinear static problems and dynamic analysis of VS composite multipart structures.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Vincenzo Oliveri gained his M. Eng. in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Palermo in 2013 and his Ph.D. in Composite Structures in 2016. His research background focuses on the development of new analysis tools for the static and dynamic analysis of composite thin-walled structures.
Vincenzo was one of the first postdoctoral researchers who joined the VariComp group at the University of Limerick in January 2017, under the supervision of Professor Paul Weaver. Within this role, he carried out research in the field of computational mechanics and design of composite lightweight structures. Appointed as Assistant Professor in 2019, in August 2023, he was promoted to the role of Associate Professor in “Mechanical and Space System Engineering Design” at the School of Engineering, University of Limerick, where he contributes to the design and delivery of undergraduate and master’s degree programs, as well as promoting the School’s strategic objectives in the area of aerospace engineering.
As an active member of the Composites Cluster at the Bernal Institute, Vincenzo contributes to the research carried out in the field of composite materials and lightweight structures, including research and supervision of postdoctoral researchers, PhDs and graduate students of the Institute. His current research activities span the design and manufacture of advanced aerospace structures and the modelling of multi-stable composite shells for novel smart and multifunctional lightweight structures. His list of publications can be found here.
For further information, please contact: ronan.ohiggins@ul.ie