Francesco Frendo

Full Professor of Machine design since december 2016, Francesco Frendo was educated at the University of Pisa and got the Master Degree cum Laude in Nuclear Engineering in 1994. He got the PhD in Mechanics of Materials in 1998.
He teaches a course of “Machine Design” for the students of the Master Laurea in Aeronautical Engineering and a course on the “Dynamics of multibody systems” for the students of the Master Laurea in Automotive Engineering
Prof Francesco Frendo has supervised about 180 Master Thesis in Mechanical Engineering, Vehicle Engineering and Aeronautical Engineering and 11 PhD Thesis.
In the period December 2020-2022 he has been vice-President of the Engineering School at the University of Pisa.
Since November 2014 till October 2020 he has been President of the Master Laurea in Automotive Engineering at the University of Pisa Now he is vice-President.
From 2013 to 2019 he has been member of the Scientific Committee and from 2019 he is member of the Steering Commettee of the Italian Scientific Society of Machine Design (AIAS).
From 2014 till 2019 he has been director of the "Corradino D'Ascanio" Tuscany Interuniversity Center for Automotive research.
From 2014 till 2017 he has been coordinator of the PhD Program in Vehicle Engineering and Transport Systems and member of the PhD council in Industrial Engineering at the University of Pisa.
From 2014 till 2020 he has been member of the Governing Board of Movet (Centro d’Iniziativa su MOtori, VEicoli e Tecnologie).

Through the years, the research activity of prof. Francesco Frendo has been focused on the following main areas: fatigue of materials, fatigue assessment of welded joints, mechanical behavior of materials, including innovative materials such as MR fluids and shape memory alloys, mechanical design, dynamics and structural integrity, vehicle design and vehicle dynamics. He coauthored more than 170 scientific papers published on international journal and conferences proceedings and coauthored a textbook on Machine Design, edited by Pearson.
He acts as reviewer for several international journal.

He has been involved in several National and International research project, also assuming responsibility roles.
In the period 2006-2009 he has been scientific responsible for his department of the “SIM” research project (Safety in Motion), funded by EC in the framework of FP6. He has been national coordinator of the Italian research project “Diagnostic tools for identifying the level of attention of a motor vehicle driver”, funded in 2006 by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PRIN).
He has been scientific responsible for the University of Pisa of the research project RESOLVE (Range of Electric SOlution for L-category Vehicles), funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 framework programme (research topic: H2020-GV-2014; Proposal number: 653511).
He currently is scientific coordinator for the University of Pisa of the Spoke 11 – Innovative Materials and Lightweighting of CN4MS-Sustainable Mobility Center, in the framework of PNRR funding and scientific coordinator of the PRIN research project. “Hybrid joints between dissimilar metal materials for lightweight structures of environmentally-friendly vehicles”, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR).

He got some national and international scientific awards from AIAS and SAE.
He is inventor of some national and international patents and, in particular, of the internaqtional patent “Hybrid drive assembly for a vehicle, in particular a scooter” which is realetd to the first hybrid drivetrain developed for a motorcycle.

Prof. Francesco Frendo has been enrolled as an expert consultant by the Italian Court for two catastrophic failures occurred at two industrial plants.