Study and design of motorbike mechanical components. The
investigations have been particularly focused on the shaft-hub
couplings between the fork and the steering pin of front
suspensions. This type of couplings is realised as a
compression-fit one in which one of the components (the fork) is
not symmetrical in shape.
Study of adhesively bonded and press fit couplings.
Fatigue behaviour and endurance limit study for shaft-hub
couplings.
Analysis of some critical aspects regarding bolted connections
and clamped joints have been studied in order to define the
tribological behaviour of contact surfaces with the aim of
evaluating and defining the coefficients of friction, the forces
and the torque moments useful for the correct exploitation of the
joints.
His basic and applied research activities concern the study and the
design of motorbike mechanical components. The investigations have
been particularly focused on the shaft-hub couplings between the
fork and the steering pin of front suspensions. This type of
couplings is realised as a compression-fit one in which one of the
components (the fork) is not symmetrical in shape. The research
activities were dedicated to developing a new mathematical model
useful to perform the calculation of the push-out force. The
starting point was to try to correct Lamè's well-known formulae
valid for high thickness pipes in the elastic and the symmetric
field. These formulae were corrected adding some appropriate
coefficients, which are able to take into account the different
circumferential stiffnesses of the forks and, thus, to compute more
accurately the tensile state produced close to the coupling
surfaces with errors lower than 10%. All the findings were obtained
using a hybrid method that consists in the execution of a large
number of FEM analyses to be compared with the results coming from
the theoretical and experimental results. Another problem
investigated and strongly connected with the shaft-hub couplings,
is the definition of fatigue limit of the components and the
determination of the stress concentration factors of these
couplings.
A large amount of effort has been dedicated to the study of
adhesively bonded and compression fit couplings. The combined
effects of this type of joining techniques, have been extensively
studied in order to evaluate their influence on the failure load of
the couplings; the failure load has been evaluated on the basis of
a large number of parameters by applying the Design of Experiment
method. In this type of couplings the interference level was
evaluated according to the theoretical formula described above and
performing some FEM analyses. Finally the defect density of the
adhesive was evaluated by applying the acoustic emission technique
as non-destructive testing method.
In recent years, some critical aspects regarding bolted connections
and clamped joints have been studied in order to define the
tribological behaviour of contact surfaces with the aim of
evaluating and defining the coefficients of friction, the forces
and the torque moments useful for the correct exploitation of the
joints.
The research has been carried out in cooperation with some
important companies which supported the activities with specific
agreements or Doctorate scholarship grants drawn up with the DIN
Department of the University of Bologna; the research results are
presented in the papers reported in the publications list of one of
the next sections.
