Italiano
Ettore Antona
22 June 1931 13 January 2009



Picture of Professor Ettore Antona

Prof. Ettore Antona

Outline of Scientific Activities

Some Significant Achievements

The following is an (incomplete) overview of significant achievements:

  1. A structural component, if dragged by the surrounding elements, can have transformations, often ignored in the literature, giving rise to behaviours with important implications. For example, a rectangular panel can have critical limits at the edge of the triangle obtained by the diagonal, (12), (17), (21), (24), (26), (34).
  2. Linearised analyses of stability limits, as well as approaches which do not take into account initial imperfections of materials, can have serious limitations, (10), (23), (31).
  3. Perturbation methods in linearised analyses allow obtaining critical loads from vibration patterns, and viceversa,  thus solving also cases of multiple eingenvalues, (32), (41), (73).
  4. Continuum dynamics with time dependent boundary location can be addressed by tracing back to the propagational nature of dynamics itself. Boundary conditions may have Doppler effects.
  5. In elementary terms, the propagational nature of unidimensional dynamic phenomena is already embedded in prostapheresis formuals. In a bidimensional context, this issue has been addressed through a synthesis of  closed-form results and discretised analysis, (57), (58), (62), (63), (64), (66), (95), (96), (100).
  6. At a logico-methodological level, mathematical models for the solution of problems in their phenomenological aspects share the same nature of axiomatic models lying the foundations of subfields of mathematics (e.g., geometry). Therefore, they are affected by the completeness-coherence tradeoff, giving rise to issues of approximation and applicability. Cicala's asymptotic approaches acquire particular importance in such context, (78), (84), (99).
  7. Uncertainty, as a concept derived from communication theory and substantially equivalent to entropy,  can be assumed, through the principle of maximum uncertainty, as the central backbone of statistical inference. This allows achieving approaches to statistic data elaboration that are more powerful and sophisticated than Bayes-style corrections, which currently dominate in the literature, (87), (90).
  8. It is possible to achieve probabilistic quantification of security (and in particular of structural security), normally obtained by applying deterministic criteria to probabilistic values, by using instead results stemming from the application of the principle of maximum uncertainty, (71), (87), (90), (97), (103).
  9. The investigation of problems related to the design of space vehicles at relativistic speeds has led to the the formulation of a principle of "invariance of engineering criticalities in restricted relativity" which allows full exploitation of experimental results on the behaviour of materials in a relativistic environment, (114), (115).
  10. The problem of realising simulation-based or model-based tests has been investigated in depth through a comparison of the underlying principles, (120), (122).
  11. A personal view of scientific reaserch advancement, conceived as a generalisation of logical processes and methdological approaches proposed by distinguished collegues at Politecnico di Torino, has been presented in a PhD-level course, (123).