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Lorenzo Morini

Dr Lorenzo Morini

Lecturer in Advanced Solid Mechanics

School of Engineering

Email
MoriniL@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 75818
Campuses
Queen's Buildings - West Building Extension, Room W/2.32, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I graduated in Physics at the University of Bologna (Italy) and received my PhD from University of Pavia (Italy). I have more than 10 years of experience working on research topics concerning modelling of the mechanical properties of advanced materials. In 2016 I was awarded with a Marie Curie SIRCIW Cofund fellowship funded by European Union (Horizon 2020) and Welsh Government.

Since 2019, I am Lecturer in Advanced Solid Mechanics at the School of Engineering and member of the Applied and Computational Mechanics Group. My research activity is strongly interdisciplinary and is placed at the intersection between Solid Mechanics, Structural Dynamics and Applied Mathematics. My broad research interests include:

  • Quasiperiodic and quasicrystalline structures and materials;
  • Wave dynamics in mechanical metamaterials;
  • Application of physics-informed machine learning methods to structural dynamics problems;
  • Multiphysics mechanics in renewable energy devices;
  • Fracture mechanics in continuum and structured media.

The main vision of my research is the design of artificial materials and structures able to achieve exceptional mechanical properties that are not commonly found in nature, the so-called mechanical metamaterials. If you are interested in more details concerning my research activity, you can visit the research section of my profile.

Publication

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2007

Articles

Research

Quasicrystalline-generated mechanical metamaterials

Quasicrystalline-generated metamaterials are a class of periodic multi-phase materials and structures whose elementary cells are designed according to quasicrystalline substitution rules. These substitution rules generate sequences of phases which are one-dimensional projection of quasicrystalline tilings such as the Penrose tiling. Two examples of quasicrystalline substitution rules are the Fibonacci Golden Mean and Silver Mean rules. We investigated the extraordinary properties of structured rods and laminates generated according to these substitution rules in terms of filtering and control of elastic waves.

Quasicrystalline phononic rods

We studied the dynamical properties of two-phases periodic rods whose elementary cells are designed according to Fibonacci Golden Mean and Silver mean rules. The spectrum of harmonic axial vibrations in this type of structures is characterized by self-similar stop/pass band layout. We derived analytical scaling factors governing the self-similarity, and we defined a particular sub-class of structures, the so-called canonical structures, associated with a periodic stop/pass band diagram. The explicit periodicity conditions of the spectrum together with the exact scaling factors provide novel extremely efficient analytical tools to control and optimise the wave filtering properties of periodic metamaterials.

watch a short presentation about quasicrystalline phononic rods:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdSEzV3EtU

Negative refraction in quasicrystalline laminates

We have shown that periodic two-phases laminates with fundamental cells designed adopting the Fibonacci substitution rules can provide negative refraction of an anti-plane elastic wave obliquely incident at an interface with an elastic substrate. The number of modes transmitted at the interface depends on the solution of the Floquet-Bloch dispersion relation for the laminate, and can be controlled and predicted by means of self-similar properties similar to those detected in quasicrystalline rods. We found that, with respect to a periodic classical bilayer, high order Fibonacci laminates can provide negative refraction at lower frequencies and for a wider range of angles of incidence. The attained results represent an important advancement towards the realisation of multilayered quasicrystalline metamaterials with the aim to control negatively refracted elastic waves.

watch a short presentation about negative refraction using Fibonacci laminates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVhfbxei9Zw

Mechanics of multi-layered renewable energy devices

Several renewable energy devices such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), lithium ions batteries and photovoltaic cells are characterized by multi-layered composite structures. In operative scenarios, these structures are subject to severe thermomechanical and thermodiffusive stresses which can cause danage and crack formation compromising their perfomances. In order to predict these phenomena and to optimize the thermodiffusive and mechanical properties of the energy devices, we developed an asymptotic homogenization approach providing exact expressions for the effective constitutive tensors of the homogeneous thermodiffusive continuum equivalent to any arbitrary multi-layered heterogeneous structure. We also studied the dispersive properties of Floquet-Bloch waves in periodic thermodiffusive laminates which can be used to represent stocks of battery devices.

watch a short presentation about effective properties of multi-layered energy devices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clxN6aMfGo4

Teaching

Modules thought in BEng, MEng and MSc in Civil and Structural Engineering:

2018 - Now: EN4570/ENT570. Dynamics. 4th year MEng and MSc. Module leader.

2019 - Now: EN4574/ENT700. Advanced Structural Dynamics. 4th year MEng and MSc. Module leader.

2018 - 2020: ENT725. Engineering Case Study. MSc module. Assistant lecturer.

2019 - 2020: EN1916. Structures. 1st year BEng and MEng. Assistant lecturer.

Biography

  • PhD in Physics, University of Pavia, Italy, 2011.
  • MSc in Applied Physics, University of Bologna, Italy, 2007.
  • BSc in Physics, University of Bologna, Italy, 2004.

Academic positions

  • 2019-present: Lecturer in Advanced Solid Mechanics, School of Engineering, Cardiff University, UK;
  • 2016-2019 Marie Curie SIRCIW Cofund Fellow, School of Engineering, Cardiff University, UK;
  • 2016 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy;
  • 2013-2016 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Italy;
  • 2011-2013 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Science and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Committees and reviewing

Reviewer for the following international journals:

  • Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids
  • Journal of Elasticity
  • Mechanics Research Communications
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
  • Applied Mathematical Modelling
  • Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids
  • Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences
  • Scientific Reports
  • Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics
  • Acta Mechanica et Automatica

Supervisions

I am currently available to supervise MSc and PhD students in the areas of:

  • Mechanics of quasicrystalline materials and structures;
  • Dynamical phenomena in mechanical metamaterials;
  • Wave and fracture propagation in lattice materials;
  • Multiphysics mechanics in renewable energy devices;
  • Advanced analyical and computational methods in structural dynamics.

If you are interested, email to MoriniL@cardiff.ac.uk .

Current PhD supervisions

  1. Zhijiang Chen - Elastodynamic of Quasicrystalline Metamaterials (main supervisor);
  2. Abdelbaset K Mostafa Farhat - Quasiperiodic-based Mechanical Metamaterials (main supervisor);
  3. Mazen Alqathami - Monitoring of Barely Visible Damages in Composite Structures (main supervisor);
  4. Pietro Liguori - Advanced Smart Materials and Metamaterials (co-supervisor);
  5. Anirudh Sharma Venkata Gullapalli - Structural Damage Detection in Composite Structures (co-supervisor).