
Professor Alberto Pirrera
MSc(Palermo), PhD
Current positions
Professor of Nonlinear Structural Mechanics
School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering
Contact
Press and media
Many of our academics speak to the media as experts in their field of research. If you are a journalist, please contact the University’s Media and PR Team:
Research interests
Alberto Pirrera is an Associate Professor of Nonlinear Structural Mechanics at the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Bristol, where he has been a faculty member since 2013, holding an EPSRC Early Career Research Fellowship (2015-2020), and where he completed his PhD in 2011. Before that, Alberto obtained his Master’s in Aerospace Engineering from Università degli Studi di Palermo, in Italy. His academic home is the Bristol Composites Institute (ACCIS), where he is a co-director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites Science, Engineering and Manufacturing. A modeller and a theoretician specialising in engineering science, Alberto’s research interests lie in the area of structural analysis, design and optimisation. In recent years, he has focused on well-behaved nonlinear structures, on morphing, adaptive and shape changing devices and on wind turbine blades.
Research Interests & Expertise:
• Structural & Solid Mechanics,
• Nonlinear Mechanics,
• Structural Stability,
• Computational Mechanics,
• Morphing and Adaptive Structures,
• Composite Structures,
• Wind Turbine Blade Structures.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Structural Efficiency and Multi-functionality of Well-Behaved Nonlinear Composite Structures
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Aerospace EngineeringDates
01/04/2015 to 31/08/2020
Thesis supervisions
On the Assessment of Design Tools for Thick-Walled, Thermoplastic Composite Pipe
Supervisors
Aeroelastic Tailoring of a Composite Wing with Adaptive Control Surfaces for Optimal Aircraft Performance
Supervisors
Morphing Mechanisms Based on Nonlinear Helical Composite Elements
Supervisors
Aeroelastic Tailoring of Composite Aircraft Wings with Uncertainty Quantification for Robust and Reliable Design
Supervisors
Design Considerations in Aerospace Multilevel Structural Optimisation
Supervisors
Nonlinear Lattice Structures
Supervisors
Bioinspired Nonlinear Structures
Supervisors
Development of well-behaved nonlinear structures
Supervisors
Adaptive Compliant Structures for Fluid Flow Control
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
28/10/2024A Passively Actuated Spoiler Using Sequential Interacting Instabilities
Assessing Mechanical-Adhesive Hybrid Joints for Segmented Wind Turbine Blades: A Parametric Study using Simulation Methods
New insight into the buckling of growing bilayers
A Fully Passive Pop-up Leading Edge Spoiler for Gust Load Alleviation
Energy Barriers Measurement for Efficient Shape-Shifting in Multistable Lattice Metamaterials
Thesis
Bistable Structures for Morphing Applications Using Anisotropic Shells
Supervisors
Award date
01/01/2011