The main themes of the research are:

Characterization and choice of materials

The choice of a material occurs through the determination of its characteristics by means of mechanical characterization tests (tensile, compression, bending, hardness, fatigue), metallographic analysis, determination of surface roughness and analysis of aging and corrosion behavior.

Chip removal

During the choice of the material it is necessary to evaluate the workability with machine tools such as lathes and milling machines.

Innovative joints

A very important research area concerns innovative joining techniques such as gluing and welding.

As regards gluing, there are many aspects studied, including the preparation of the surfaces:

• identification of the process parameters to be adopted to carry out surface treatments with traditional and innovative techniques, such as cold plasma and laser;
• surface analysis, by means of wettability tests and evaluation of surface roughness.

The study of welding as well as having solid foundations on traditional techniques (MIG / MAG TIG coated electrode) is focused on innovative techniques such as laser technology and Friction Stir Welding.

Additive manufacturing and reverse engineering

The creation of a prototype for additive manufacturing is increasingly important in the industrial landscape in order to directly have a real piece to use and test. In some cases it is very important to be able to replicate an object by acquiring its geometries by laser scanning in order to later have a CAD drawing on which to make changes and possibly reproduce it by additive manufacturing.

Composite materials

More and more popular due to their ability to withstand very high loads while maintaining lightness.

Accelerated aging

In industrial production, it is increasingly important to predict the behavior of materials and products in aggressive environments. UV rays, salt spray and controlled humidity and temperature environment are the typical test conditions applied during aging tests.

Researchers

• Alessandro Bruzzone
• Carla Gambaro
• Enrico Lertora
• Chiara Mandolfino

Laboratories

• Plant and Simulation Technologies - o.u. of Metrology and Machine Tools
• Plant and Simulation Technologies - o.u. Tests and Characterization of Materials, Joints and Welds and Metallography

Publications

• Comparing the adhesion strength of 316L stainless steel joints after laser surface texturing by CO2 and fiber lasers. Mandolfino C., Obeidi M., Lertora E., Brabazon D. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 2020, 109(3-4), pp. 1059-1069
• Low pressure plasma treatment of CFRP substrates for adhesive bonding: an investigation of joint durability under severe temperature-moisture conditioning. Pizzorni M., Lertora E., Mandolfino C. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 2020, 99, 102592
• Low-pressure plasma treatment of CFRP substrates for epoxy-adhesive bonding: an investigation of the effect of various process gases. Pizzorni M., Lertora E., Gambaro C., Salerno M., Prato M. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 2019, 102(9-12), pp. 3021-3035
• Influence of adhesive in FSW: Investigation on fatigue behavior of welded, weld-bonded, and adhesive-bonded joints in aluminum AA 6082 T6. Lertora, E., Mandolfino, C., Pizzorni, M., Gambaro, C. Materials, 2019, 12(8), 1242
• Formal tools for management of manufacturing systems: A multi agents system approach. D’Addona  D.M., Bruzzone  A.A. International Journal of Automation Technology, 2019, 13(5), pp. 691-699