EDUCATION, TRAINING AND WORKING EXPERIENCE
Prof. Leonardo BERTINI obtained his degree “cum laude” in Nuclear Engineering in 1980, at the Engineering Faculty of Pisa University.
After degree, he worked for about three years, as a mechanical engineer in the design department of two Italian companies operating in the mechanical field: Nuovo Pignone (Florence) and Costruzioni Metalliche Finsider (CMF, Livorno).
In the former company, Prof. Bertini worked mainly in the field of structural integrity of steam turbine components, with special attention for low-pressure stages vibration and for corrosion-fatigue phenomena. During the period spent in CMF, Prof. Bertini was mainly involved in the field of “Computer Aided Engineering”, developing a program for automated design of electricity trusses.
From March 1984 to November 1986, Prof. Bertini attended the Ph.D. course in “Mechanics of Materials”, conducting a research on the corrosion-fatigue behaviour of structural steels in marine environment.
Since 1988 he became a member of Pisa University staff, obtaining the grade of Associate Professor in “Mechanical Design and Machine Construction” on November 1st 1992 and that of Full professor on January 1st 2000.
As a result of his research activity, Prof. Bertini published about 120 papers, many of which in the most important international journals concerning mechanical engineering field.
Prof. Bertini has been a member of the Scientific Committee of several National and International Conferences. He also works as a “referee” for some international journals, including:
– Engineering Fracture Mechanics
– International Journal of Fatigue
– Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures
He has been the director of the Engineering Ph.D. School “Leonardo da Vinci” for four years and the President of the Mechanical Engineering course board for several years.
From 1993 to 2000 he was a member of the Board of the Italian Association for Stress Analysis, also carrying out the functions of Administrative Secretary and Treasurer from 1993 to 1997. From 2005 to 2007 he was finally President of the same association.
Prof. Bertini has been the vice-Dean of the Engineering Faculty from 2009 to 2012 and Rector’s delegate for the promotion of spin-offs, start-ups and patents from 2016 to 2022.
MAIN PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Prof. Leonardo Bertini always tried to operate in order to conjugate scientific value of his research with actual application concern, as it is important for true engineering activities.
His main professional skills can be summarised as follows:
- Development of complex structural FEM models: aimed at analysing and simulating rather uncommon behaviour; when developing a FEM model, the main concern must be deeply understanding the problem from a physical point of view, clearly separating the aspects that require to be accurately represented, from those which can be neglected; afterwards, the model itself can be designed, set-up and tested against sound physical estimate to ensure accuracy; by this way, it is possible to conjugate model accuracy, with optimal use of resources.
- CAE automation: development of specific software tools for automatization of design of even large classes of products, so dramatically reducing time and resources for development of specific applications (e.g. a tool was developed for semi-automatic design of single pass heat exchanger, based on thermal and mechanical requirements)
- Failure analysis: set-up and actuation of activities for individuating causes of failures, even in very complex cases, developing physical understanding of the problems, tools for its modelling (e.g. by FEM) and selecting possible solutions (e.g.: fatigue failure of railway axes (Viareggio accident), cyclic creep failure of Inconel steel treatment plant burners).
- Development of structural analytical models: even in the FEM analysis age, the capability of developing analytical tools for modelling mechanical phenomena and/or the predicted actual behaviour of structural machine components is of crucial importance, either for dramatically reduce the use of computational resources and analysis times, or to increase the understanding of physical aspects and of the actual relevance of different parameters (e.g.: analytical models were developed to predict the energy loss of a CVT and the leakage pressure of metal-to-metal flanges)
- Development of experimental plans: experimental validation of machine behaviour is an irreplaceable tool to ensure safe operation, avoiding dangerous and costly breakdown; however, experimental activities are highly costly and time consuming; therefore, the development of sound and well designed experiment plans, based on DOE techniques, are crucial for gaining a safe and economical design; the design and development of specific test set-up, is also an important step, as in most cases standard tests are only suitable for material, rather than for full scale components (e.g. : a resonant test frame was developed for fatigue testing of full-scale oil drilling batteries)
- Optimization: defining optimal shape and dimensioning of structural components, with approaches based on an integrated use of shape and parametric optimization techniques, also allowing to account for technological and manufacturing constraints.
- Material modelling: development and calibration of mathematical models representing specific material behaviour aspects, based on test set-up and interpretation (e.g.: models for deep rolling, cyclic hardening, etc.)
- Full scale component representation: passing form material knowledge to full scale component behaviour prediction is a very complex (and often underestimated) matter, involving several aspects often causing relevant uncertainties of results (e.g. prediction of Al alloy scooter suspension arm, prediction and optimisation of fatigue strength of full scale Drill collars and Drill Pipes for Oil batteries)
- Process simulation: integrated multi-level analytical-FEM simulation of process like Additive Manufacturing and Welding processes, for prediction of mechanical properties, shape distortions and residual stress distribution.
MAIN RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Prof. Leonardo Bertini research activities are documented in over 130 papers, most of on high rating peer reviewed journal .The main research fields are reported in the specific page of the presente web site.
Bibliometric indexes:
- Scopus:
- Documents=111
- h-index = 24 ( 2008-2023 period)
- h-index (excluding self-citations): 21
- n° of citations (excluding self-citations) = 1422
- mean citation number per paper (excluding self-citations) = 12.8
AWARDS
The research activities earned Prof. Leonardo BERTINI the following awards:
- AIAS (Italian Association for Stress Analysis) Best Paper in Congress Award 1992
- AIAS Best Paper in Congress Award 2000
- CEGB Award (Central Electricity Generating Board) 2010, conferred by the Editorial Board of the Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design
- SMAU Award for Innovation 2016, awarded to the spin-off company of the University of Pisa Letomec together with Electrolux
- CAE Conference Best Poster Award 2016
- AIAS Simulation Award 2017.
PATENTS
Prof. Leonardo Bertini contributed to the development of the following patents:
- Device for detecting the mechanical characteristics of materials, particularly metallic materials. TO2004A000535 filed in 2004 and subsequently purchased by the company Scienzia Machinale Srl and by this extended internationally in 2009 .
- Helios: Innovative technique for the automated measurement of the hydrogen content and related diffusion coefficient in materials and related measuring instrument, 2012