Marco Amabili

Marco Amabili is a Professor who holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Vibrations and Fluid-Structure Interaction, Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.

Biography and achievements

Marco Amabili was born and raised in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy. He studied at the University of Ancona (now renamed Marche Polytechnic University) where he got his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bologna. Amabili is very well known for his extensive research on nonlinear vibrations and dynamic stability of shell and plate structures, a subject to which he has given many innovative contributions. Professor Amabili serves as Contributing Editor for International Journal of Non-linear Mechanics (Elsevier). He is also Associate Editor of the Journal of Fluids and Structures, Elsevier, Applied Mechanics Reviews, ASME, and Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, ASME. He is member of the Editorial Board of several journals, including the Journal of Sound and Vibration, Elsevier. He is the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Chair of the ASME Technical Committee Dynamics and Control of Systems and Structures. Marco Amabili received the Christophe Pierre Research Excellence Award from McGill University in 2015 and was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2018. He was elected chair of the Canadian National Committee for IUTAM (International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics) in 2019. He is an elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He delivered the Koiter lecture of the Dutch Research School on Engineering Mechanics in 2019. The Koiter lecture honors researchers who have made profound contributions to the field of Engineering Mechanics, and it has a rich history. In 2020 Amabili was selected to receive the Worcester Reed Warner Medal of the ASME; established in 1930, is one of the society award with the longest history.

Professor Amabili is working in the area of vibrations, nonlinear dynamics and stability of thin-walled structures, reduced-order models, fluid-structure interaction and vascular biomechanics. His research is multi-disciplinary, and it has been utilized in the design and analysis of aeronautical and aerospace structures, laminated and FGM shell structures, improving the design of vascular grafts, safety of pressure tanks and innovative flow-meters. Amabili is the author of over 480 papers (over 220 in refereed international journals, including Nature Communications and Physical Review X) in vibrations and dynamics and has achieved a high h-Index. He is the author of the monographs Nonlinear Vibrations and Stability of Shells and Plates and Nonlinear Mechanics of Shells and Plates in Composite, Soft and Biological Materials both published by Cambridge University Press.

Amabili, together with M.P. Païdoussis and F. Pellicano, showed for the first time the strongly subcritical behavior of the stability of circular cylindrical shells conveying flow. A series of papers presented theoretical, numerical and experimental investigations, showing that a supported circular shell made of aluminum presents divergence for much smaller velocity than predicted by linear theory. Since 2014, Amabili developed innovative shell theories with thickness deformation. These theories were extended to model soft biological tissues that undergo large thickness deformations and are described as incompressible and hyperelastic. This interest was expanded into the experimental and numerical study of the mechanics of the human aorta, the viscoelastic characterization of aortic tissues and aortic grafts.

In 2017 Amabili participated to a research with the Technical University of Delft to identify the Young modulus of Graphene nano-drums from nonlinear vibrations; the outcome of the study was published in Nature Communications. Around the same time he started developing, for the first time, original and innovative models of nonlinear damping for geometrically nonlinear vibrations of structural elements, a very complex and important problem in engineering applications.

Education

• Ph.D. in Mech. Eng. – University of Bologna, Italy, 1996
• M.Sc. in Mech. Eng. – University of Ancona, Italy, 1992

International awards

• Worcester Reed Warner Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2020
• Christophe Pierre Research Excellence Award, McGill University, 2015
• Elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2018
• Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering
• Elected to the European Academy of Sciences
• Koiter lecture of the Dutch research school on Engineering Mechanics in 2019
• Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

Books

• M. Amabili, Nonlinear vibrations and stability of shells and plates, Cambridge University Press (2008). ISBN 978-0-521-88329-0
• M. Amabili, Nonlinear mechanics of shells and plates in composite, soft and biological materials, Cambridge University Press (2018). ISBN 978-1-107-12922-1