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Journal of Vibration and Control

Special Issue in honor of Professor Fabrizio Vestroni

PREFACE

This special issue of the Journal of Vibration and Control is being published in honor of Fabrizio Vestroni, Professor of Structural Mechanics at the University of Rome La Sapienza, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Professor Vestroni’s academic career has spanned nearly three decades. During this period, he has had a significant impact through important research contributions in the fields of structural dynamics and nonlinear vibrations, engineering education, and mentoring of graduate students as well as through institutional and international organizational activities.

Fabrizio Vestroni received Master of Science in Structural Engineering with summa cum laude from the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1970. He began his academic career as research assistant in the School of Engineering of the University of Rome at La Sapienza. Later, in 1977, he joined the University of L’Aquila where he became an Associate Professor of Structural Dynamics in 1983 and Full Professor in 1986. In 1994, he joined the School of Engineering at La Sapienza as Full Professor and in 1998 he was appointed as the Head of the Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering. He served as the Coordinator of the PhD program in Structural Engineering at La Sapienza from its inception for the period 1988 to 2002. From 2003, he has been the Director of the International Master’s Program in Analysis and Control of Vibrations in Civil and Industrial Applications.

Professor Vestroni has undertaken many institutional positions and responsibilities as member and president of strategic committees of the University of Rome and the National Science Foundation of Italy. He has promoted and chaired large number of workshops and seminars at La Sapienza, always encouraging interesting, fruitful discussions and forging

new collaborations. His skills have also been instrumental in successfully organizing number of conferences and mini-symposia in the fields of linear and nonlinear dynamics and structural identification. For instance, he served as co-chairman of the IUTAM Symposium on Chaotic Dynamics and Control of Systems and Processes in Mechanics held at the University

of Rome La Sapienza 8–13 June 2003. Beside this international event, he has also organized many symposia in ASME and EUROMECH meetings. Professor Vestroni is continuing member of the EUROMECH Nonlinear Oscillations Conference Committee, on which he has served since 2003. In addition, he has been member of the Editorial Boards of Meccanica from 1992 to 1996, the International Journal on Inverse Problems from 1997 to 1999, the Journal of Vibration and Control from 1998 to the present, the Journal of Structural Control from 1998 to 2001, the International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics from 1999 to the present, and Acta Mechanica from 2006. He has been Guest Editor for some Special Issues in the Journal of Vibration and Control and the International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics.

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Professor Vestroni has also served as a consultant to many private and public firms, on problems and studies related to the static and dynamic behavior of complex structures, bridges and monuments. These activities have included analysis and design of devices for seismic isolation of statues, analysis of seismic vulnerability of the building housing the Bank of Italy, dynamic studies of the Colosseum, and assessment of the structural effects on the Colosseum and the Basilica of Maxentius caused by the underground tunneling for the construction of new subway. Moreover, he has been the Principal Investigator of several national research and technical projects, some of them involving large group of active Italian scientists and researchers in the field of structural dynamics.

At the University of L’Aquila and the University of Rome at La Sapienza, Professor Vestroni worked with many generations of graduate and post-graduate students with many well-recognized contributions in the areas of hysteretic systems, system identification, active and passive control and structural health monitoring. During the course of his academic career to date, he has directly advised 10 PhD and 30 MS students. These contributions have been disseminated in rich list of publications that includes more than one hundred journal papers and conference publications.

Professor Vestroni is researcher with unique combination of engineering intuition and physical understanding of phenomena, which are based on solid grasp of the theoretical

and experimental underpinnings. This has enabled him to bridge different areas of linear and nonlinear mechanics and structural engineering. In his early studies on earthquake engineering, he predicted the importance of material nonlinearity on the dynamic response of systems exhibiting hysteresis that are typical in structural and mechanical engineering. Employing theories of increasing complexity, he has shown the nonlinear effects caused by variety of memory-dependent constitutive laws in classical oscillators – elastoperfectly plastic, elasto-plastic with hardening rules (Journal of Engineering Mechanics 111(12), 1985; International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics 25(2–3), 1990; Nonlinear Dynamics 7(3), 1995; Nonlinear Dynamics 32(3), 2003) as well as in non-classical oscillators, such as in shape-memory alloy oscillators where temperature variations associated with the phase transformations were originally recognized to be necessary for modelling and analysis (International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics 38(9), 2003; International Journal of Solids and Structures 41(5–6), 2004). Throughout his investigations, he has blended different techniques and tools, including analytical (harmonic balance, averaging, method of multiple scales) and refined numerical techniques (path-following with Poincaré mapping and Floquet theory). With the same physically-driven approach, he has sought to develop refined mechanical models of flexible structures under dynamic loads to disclose new phenomena, mostly in strings and cables (International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics 19(1), 1984; Applied Mathematics and Computation 70(2–3), 1995; Nonlinear Dynamics 9(3), 1996; International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics 42(3), 2007), axially moving beams (Journal of Vibration and Acoustics 122 (21–30), 2000; Journal of Sound and Vibration 258(1), 2002), compact and non-compact beams (Journal of Applied Mechanics 53(3), 1986; Journal of Sound and Vibration 134(1), 1987), thin-walled open cross-section beams (International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics 38(7), 2003) and non-smooth oscillators (Nonlinear Dynamics 35(1), 2004; International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 15(6), 2005; Nonlinear Dynamics 46(3), 2006). A distinguishing feature of his investigations is the attention paid to the assessment of the accuracy of the physical models and the solution

strategies ranging from analytical techniques to finite elements (Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 193(1–2), 2003). Another area of his recognized research contribution is the identification of parametric models (Engineering Structures 15(1), 1993; 27(2), 2005) and damage identification procedures using interpretative models governed by physical parameters (Journal of Vibration and Control 2, 1996; Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics 28(5), 1999; Journal of Engineering Mechanics 126(7), 2000; Journal of Vibration and Control 9(3–4), 2003). Recently, the use of auxiliary systems,

electromechanically coupled with the main structure, and the exploitation of the nonlinear features of the response have been investigated for damage detection (Research in Non-Destructive Evaluation 16(3), 2005; International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics, 42(3), 2007). He has made many important contributions to these fields, testified by the high number of the corresponding citations.

Professor Vestroni has had a long and distinguished career in structural dynamics and nonlinear vibrations. Many students and researchers in the field have certainly benefited from their associations with him. It is our sincere hope that this special issue, which includes contributions from many well-known researchers in the field, will serve as fitting tribute to him.

Journal of Vibration and Control, 14(1–2): 3–5, 2008

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