-Fatigue of welded structures: investigation of the fatigue assessment of welded structures made of thin plates in marine/ships applications. In particular, welded joints obtained from advanced methods such as ”laser hybrid” are considered. In general, applicability of local criteria to welded joints in those completely different scales are under evaluation and the development of new solution based on Strain Energy Density and other approaches is the main target. Attention is also paid to plasticity effects in thin welded joints.

-Fracture mechanics at small scales. With recent developments in and miniaturization of electronic devices, the size of elements has been approaching a few nanometers. Currently i'm studying the fracture mechanics and fatigue at small scales, considering micro and nano specimens. Effort is devoting on the application of local approaches to those small scales for the static and fatigue assessment of notched and cracked micro- nano-components.

-Advanced mechanical design against fatigue at high temperature and interaction with creep phenomenon. The main purpose of the research conducted during the Ph.D. was the investigation of high temperature fatigue and creep-fatigue interaction of different structural materials, considering notched components. In continuity with the Ph.D. activity, i'm still working on the definition of methods to assess high temperature fatigue design of notches through local approaches, such as Strain Energy Density. Because of the non linear behavior observed at high temperature, theoretical aspects related with plasticity and J-Integral approach are studied as well.