ASD Lab

Rauno Cavallaro obtained his MSc in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2009. He worked from July 2009 and August 2010 in Bauhaus Luftfahrt, a German research institute financed by the Bavarian government and several aeronautical industries, where he was in charge of the design of unconventioanl configurations.
In August 2010 Dr. Cavallaro moved to San Diego to pursue his doctoral degree in the prestigious joint doctoral program bewteen San Diego State University (SDSU) and University of California San Diego (UCSD). Under guidance of his mentors, Prof. Lucaino Demasi (SDSU) and Prof. David Benson (UCSD) his research focused on the nonlinear aeroelastic behavior of Joined Wings. During his PhD Dr. Cavallaro gained several prestigious awards, such as the Collier Research HyperSizer/AIAA Structures Best Paper Award. Moreover he was granted several scholarship, e.g., the Inamori Fellowship.
After earning hid Doctoral Degree Dr. Cavallaro joined in April 2015 Prof. Daniella Raveh’s group at the Technion University. He worked on rediced order models for nonlinear aeroelastic problems.
In February 2016 Dr. Rauno Cavallaro joined University Carlos III of Madrid as «Profesor Visitante». His research focuses on innovative aircraft design, hybrid/electric aircraft, multidisciplinary design and optimization and aeroelasticity.

Andrea Cini obtained the BSc in Aerospace Engineering and the MSc in Aeronautical Engineering, with specialisation in Aircraft Structure, from the University of Pisa respectively in 2003 and 2006. Andrea earned the PhD degree at Cranfield University, UK, in the field of Fatigue and Damage Tolerance, in 2009, investigating the short crack development at the root of maintenance-induced scratches as part of the Scribe Marks research programme, funded by Airbus.
Subsequently he developed his research activity in Aerostructures and Fatigue and Damage Tolerance as research Fellow at Cranfield University and Scuola Sant’Anna, Pisa, working on damage evolution in metallic and composite materials and design of bio-inspired flapping wing robots.
In 2013 Andrea moved to industry, as manager of the Design and Development department of Asso Werke s.r.l., an Italian automotive company of 400 employees producing engine pistons and cylinders for sports cars and motorbikes. At Asso Werke he designed pistons for customers, such as Ferrari, Audi, BMW, McLaren, developing thermo-mechanical stress analysis procedures and multiaxial fatigue prediction methods.
Andrea came back to academia in November 2015 joining the Centre for Aerospace Manufacturing at the University of Nottingham, UK. At Nottingham he was involved as Project Manager and Stress and Design technical authority in the Clean Sky 2 EU research project, ASTRAL, where his team designs a novel lightweight composite joined wing for a new compound helicopter flying demonstrator (RACER), in partnership with Airbus Helicopters and GE Aviation. Andrea also occupied the position of Aerostructures Theme Lead at the Centre for Aerospace Manufacturing with the task of developing research projects and industrial collaborations in the field of Aircraft Structural Design.
In July 2019 he joined University Carlos III of Madrid as «Profesor Visitante». His research focuses on innovative aircraft structural configurations, hybrid/electric aircraft, minimum weight optimisation, conceptual design tools, «Non-black metal» composite design and damage evolution prediction in aerospace materials.

Antonio Raimondo received the MSc in Aeronautical Engineering and PhD in Aerospace Science and Technology from the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in 2011 and 2014. During his doctoral studies he performed research activities oriented to the development of numerical/experimental models for the monitoring and simulation of damage in composite materials structures. As part of his doctoral activities, he spent six months as a visitor researcher at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, USA.
After three years of postdoc in Italy, at the beginning of 2018, Dr. Raimondo joined the Aerospace Structures and Computational Mechanics group at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he carried out research work within the framework of a project funded by the Office of Naval Research of the U.S. Navy, focused on the fatigue life prediction of composite structures. Later, he was awarded of a two years “Marie Curie Leading Postdocs” fellowship, receiving funding for the development of computationally-efficient numerical methodologies able to accurately predict fatigue-induced damage in large-scale composite structures.
In May 2022 he joined the University Carlos III of Madrid as “Profesor Visitante”. His research focuses on buckling, static and fatigue damage tolerance of composite and metallic structures for aeronautical and space applications.

PhD Candidate. Mr. Castro-Fernández is an Aerospace Engineer (Bachelor’s degree at University of Cádiz, Spain + Master’s degree at University Carlos III of Madrid). He is pursuing a PhD on Aeroelasticity of Kites applied to Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) with Prof. G. Sánchez-Arriaga and Prof. R. Cavallaro as co-advisors. He is involved in project GreenKite-2 (40k€, 2020) funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación. His activities are focused on numerical aerodynamics and aeroelasticity as well as flight testing of AWE systems. In 2021, he participated in a parabolic flight campaign organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) as a member of one of the selected team. The team built a technology demonstrator for a novel transformable spacecraft. He also provides teaching assistance in the courses Flight Mechanics I (Aerospace Bachelor’s degree) and Space Science (Master’s in Space Engineering) at University Carlos III of Madrid and has been advisor of more than 5 Bachelor’s thesis. Information on his doctoral thesis at the following link.

PhD Candidate. Mr Quiben is earning his PhD, under the cosupervision of Prof. Manuel Soler and Prof. Rauno
Cavallaro, focusing his research on multidisciplinary optimization of new generation H2 aircraft design and operations with an environmental impact perspective. Currently involved in HYDROGENATING project.

Mr. Quiben graduated in Aerospace Engineering (BSc degree 2016-2020) from Universidade de Vigo and in Aeronautical Engineering (MSc 2020-2022) from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. During his studies he did two exchange stages in TOHOKU University (Japan 2019-2020) and Politecnico de Milano (2022).    Information on his doctoral thesis at the following link.

PhD Candidate. Mr. Scalia graduated in Aerospace Engineering (B.Sc. degree, in 2017) and Aeronautical Engineering (M.Sc. degree, in 2020) at Politecnico di Milano with a specialisation on Aircraft Structures. During his studies, he spent six months at Munich Technical University (October 2019 – March 2020) for doing his master thesis on Crashworthiness Optimisation of a lattice core sandwich panel.
After graduation, he was employed for nine months as a mechanical designer, working on the design of an automatic line for the welding and assembly of rebar cages for concrete reinforced structures. His main interests are Computational Mechanics, Aerodynamics, FE Analysis and CFD.
He is now a PhD Candidate at the Aeroleastic and Structural Design Lab (ASD Lab), working under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Cini on the development of design tools for virtual certification of new generation wings.   Information on his doctoral thesis at the following link.