Abstract
This seminar explores the critical role of friction interfaces in the performance and reliability of engineering assemblies, with a focus on complex systems like turbomachinery where thousands of contacting components are subject to dynamic loads. Modeling these frictional joints accurately is challenging due to limited experimental data and the complexity of contact phenomena such as stick-slip transitions and separation. This knowledge gap restricts the development of fully predictive design strategies to optimize these systems.
I will present experimental techniques - including hysteresis measurements, ultrasound, dynamic substructuring, and optical methods - that reveal key contact behaviors at friction interfaces and their influence on structural and dynamic response. The seminar will also cover industrial test cases such as aero-engine vibration data and state-of-the-art modeling approaches for simulating friction joints and nonlinear dynamics. I will finally provide practical guidelines to account for friction interfaces into both experimental setups and computational simulations.
About the Speaker
Dr Alfredo Fantetti is a Research Fellow in the Tribology Group at Imperial College London (2023-2027), where he is building a research team focused frictional contacts, nonlinear dynamics, and wave propagation in vibrating structures. He holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino and University of Illinois at Chicago (2017), and completed a Marie Curie-funded PhD at Imperial College in 2021, followed by a postdoctoral position funded by Rolls-Royce there until 2023.
Dr Fantetti works to advance the understanding of friction to inform the design of better structures with improved stress, dynamic and fatigue properties. Currently, as a visiting scholar at UIUC in Professor Matlack's research group, Dr Fantetti is working with solitary waves in granular crystals to develop a contact monitoring technique for vibration applications. His work has earned several awards including the "Innovation in Tribology Award" from the Institute of Physics and the "Young Stress Analyst competition" awarded by the British Society for Strain Measurement for his innovative research in the fields of tribology and ultrasound.
Host: Professor Kathryn Matlack