Nicola Menga – Project PI

Nicola obtained his Master cum laude in Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy) in 2011. After spending about one year in the Tribology group at Imperial College London, in 2015 he obtained his PhD in Tribology, funded by GE Avio, with a thesis on the effect of adhesion and friction viscoelastic contacts. Then, he gained a post-doc fellowship at Polytechnic University of Bari and a Visiting Academic position at Imperial College working on contact mechanics, adhesion, and viscoelasticity of layered and multilayer materials. From 2019 to 2021, he was granted a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (funded by EU) at Imperial College London (UK) to develop frictional contact models for thin soft materials.In 2020, he gained a Senior Lectureship at the Polytechnic University of Bari. In 2023, he became Associate Professor of Applied Mechanics in the same university, where he is currently member of the Tribology Lab. Since 2023, he is Principal Investigator of the research project TRIBOSCORE (TRibological modellIng for sustainaBle design Of induStrial friCtiOnal inteRfacEs), and co-Investigator of ELFIN (ELectroactive gripper For mIcro-object maNipulation), both funded by European Union – NextGenerationEU through the Italian Ministry of University and Researach.

His research interests mainly focus on tribology and interfacial phenomena, mostly aiming at controlling friction and adhesion in real systems (eg., tires, micro/macro grippers, tapes, etc.). Key topics include the modelling of elastic/viscoelastic frictional contacts of real interfaces in sliding/static condition in the presence of adhesion, also accounting for deformable substrate thickness effects (i.e., confinement) such as in-plane and out-of-plane displacements coupling; the analysis of the interplay between adhesion and viscoelasticity in sliding (steady-state conditions) and oscillating (unsteady case) contacts, eventually leading to effective adhesion enhancement/reduction; the study of the detachment behavior (i.e., peeling) between elastic/viscoelastic tapes adhering to deformable substrate; the design and achievement specific wetting behavior, such as roughness induced super-hydrophobicity on fluorinated polymers. He is also interested in friction-related nonlinear dynamics of multi-DoF systems, such as seismic isolators with viscoelastic nonlinear damping (Rubber Layer Roller Bearings), and macro-/micro-structured interfaces for sliding friction control (dry ski slopes).

List of selected publications:

• Menga, N., Bottiglione, F., & Carbone, G. (2023). Exploiting surface textures dynamics for dry friction control. Nonlinear Dynamics, 111(4), 3099-3112.
• Müller, C., Müser, M. H., Carbone, G., & Menga, N. (2023). Significance of elastic coupling for stresses and leakage in frictional contacts. Physical Review Letters, 131(15), 156201.
• Carbone, G., Mandriota, C., & Menga, N. (2022). Theory of viscoelastic adhesion and friction. Extreme Mechanics Letters, 56, 101877.
• Menga, N., Carbone, G., & Dini, D. (2018). Do uniform tangential interfacial stresses enhance adhesion?. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 112, 145-156.
• Menga, N., Afferrante, L., & Carbone, G. (2016). Effect of thickness and boundary conditions on the behavior of viscoelastic layers in sliding contact with wavy profiles. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 95, 517-529.
• Ceglie, M., Menga, N., & Carbone, G. (2024). Modelling the non-steady peeling of viscoelastic tapes. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 267, 108982.
• Ceglie, M., Menga, N., & Carbone, G. (2022). The role of interfacial friction on the peeling of thin viscoelastic tapes. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 159, 104706.
• Menga, N., Dini, D., & Carbone, G. (2020). Tuning the periodic V-peeling behavior of elastic tapes applied to thin compliant substrates. International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 170, 105331.
• Menga, N., Di Mundo, R., & Carbone, G. (2017). Soft blasting of fluorinated polymers: The easy way to superhydrophobicity. Materials & Design, 121, 414-420.
• Menga, N., Bottiglione, F., & Carbone, G. (2021). Nonlinear viscoelastic isolation for seismic vibration mitigation. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 157, 107626.
• Menga, N., Bottiglione, F., & Carbone, G. (2019). The nonlinear dynamic behavior of a Rubber-Layer Roller Bearing (RLRB) for vibration isolation. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 463, 114952.