Paolo Citti

• Professor at Marconi University

Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes, particularly PBF-LB/M, are considered advantageous due to their flexibility, which allows process engineers to design and fabricate intricate structures both in the prototyping and component manufacturing phases. It is well known that the behavior of the process directly impacts the quality of the materials an...

Powder Bed Fusion—Laser Beam/Metal (PBF-LB/M) is considered one of the most versatile and promising among the Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques, enabling the fabrication of dimensionally precise parts due to the lower thermo-mechanical distortions introduced in the process. Moreover, PBF-LB/M facilitates the manufacturability of several metal...

The automotive industry is responsible for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, and it is under notable pressure to meet the reduction targets set by the European Union for the next decades. In this context, lightweighting is a very effective design strategy for which materials selection plays a key role. One of the main challenges of l...

Powder Bed Fusion Laser Melting (PBF-LM) additive manufacturing technology is expected to have a remarkable impact on the industrial setting, making possible the realization of a metallic component with very complex designs to enhance product performance. However, the industrial use of the PBF-LM system needs a capability monitoring system to ensur...

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a significant push towards the digitalization of the Italian healthcare system. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) has designed a Digital Health national platform that is implemented based on microservices. However, the technological heterogeneity of healthcare companies poses difficulties in using...

In the additive manufacturing laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process, the optimization of the print process parameters and the development of conduction zones in the laser power (P) and scanning speed (V) parameter spaces are critical to meeting production quality, productivity, and volume goals. In this paper, we propose the use of a machine lear...

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) is one of the most widespread, versatile, and promising metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques. L-PBF allows for the manufacturing of geometrically complex parts with good surface characteristics. In this process, in order to minimize the heat loss in the first layers of printing, the building platform is prehe...

This paper investigates the effects on the material microstructure of varying the Inter-Layer Cooling Time (ILCT) during the printing process in laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) multi-laser machines. Despite these machines allowing higher productivity rates compared to single laser machines, they are affected by lower ILCT values, which could be cri...

In the automotive environment, the need to increase the performance of materials requires extra engineering efforts. The possibility of developing new materials is strategically important. Indeed, alternative solutions in terms of material choice allow designers to optimise their projects and keep competitive production costs. Traditional quenched...

The results of design activities must be transmitted to people who need them for their tasks, e.g., manufacturing, construction, software development, etc. The objectives of this chapter are to understand how design information should be represented and conveyed using standards, geometric drawings, design matrices for the complete system, DPi/DPj m...

Recent developments in Information and Communication Technology have paved the foundations for new forms of collaboration between health systems in different countries. These collaborations allow, on the one hand, to monitor recurrent health emergencies on territories, and on the other hand, they allow national health systems to share information a...

Additive Manufacturing is increasingly growing in importance in the manufacturing environment, allowing to realize very complex product designs. Identifying the real machine capability is becoming fundamental as additive manufacturing technologies are starting to substitute conventional manufacturing processes. This aspect holds particularly true i...

This paper suggests an approach based on usability engineering , used to assess the usability of machines and plants in the agro-food industry, aiming to enhance machines efficacy, efficiency and safety with a development focused on users' needs. Furthermore, the article examines the validation of the suggested approach through its application in a...

Cancer home care is a sector of particular relevance for the Italian health service. The budget ceilings imposed by public finance pose the need to reduce hospitalisation costs, moving patients from treatment to home care as much as possible. This is especially true in the field of pediatric oncology, where a protected family environment offers a v...

Metal Additive Manufacturing technologies are becoming more and more relevant for industrial component mass production. Among the various technologies developed and under development, one of the most important is the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF). The use of this technology for mass production rises several issues that typically are not considered...

In the actual automotive environment, the need to increase the performances of materials is requiring extra engineering efforts. The possibility to develop new materials is very important. Indeed alternative solutions in terms of material choice allow designers to optimize their projects and keep low costs of production. Dealing with potential alte...

This paper introduces a new model for Non‐Conformity Management, aimed at overcoming the limitations occurring when dealing with Non‐Conformities through traditional methods like Root Cause Analysis. The need to suggest a new approach to Non‐Conformities Management is connected to those situations where a large variety of Non‐Conformities is record...

The segment of high-performance cars will progressively deal with the trade-off among cost saving, high performances and quality due to customers’ higher expectations and the regulations requests for higher-power, safer, more intelligent and environmentally-friend cars. Dealing with these complicated systems requires additional designing phases and...

in recent years remote patient monitoring systems, which are conceived to monitor patient and store the recorded data, employ Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). In health care systems, if on the one hand the SOA features allow enriching the offer of services to patients and their families, on the other hand the problem arises of selecting the mo...

The game of soccer has offered matter of wide scientific analysis about the effective application of the game theory in real-life. The field observations have often detected divergent behaviors from theoretical predictions. The basic problem comes from the fact that it is difficult to build scientific models reflecting reality as closely as possibl...

Non-Conformity Management is a critical activity for each organization striving to achieve the required performance standards and obtain customers' satisfaction, particularly when new technologies are introduced. This activity is usually based on Root Cause Analysis, which is able to solve each relevant nonconformity and is even more important whil...

This paper introduces an innovative simple method to manage data uncertainly based on fuzzy logic. The proposed approach perfectly integrates with the C-VIKOR algorithm used to technically ranking the candidate materials. This method aims at helping design teams to select optimal material(s) for the success of a product at the early stages of produ...

In this case study, the methodology of test case preparation proposed in the first article is applied to the design of a testing plan in order to verify the compliance of the functional requirements for the compiling system of an F23 tax payment form. The objective of this approach is the definition of the functional requirements coverage matrix to...

New communication technologies and development of increasingly advanced systems for remote assistance create important opportunities related to the spread of e-health systems and devices for health monitoring and healthcare integration. Despite the increasingly widespread use of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) systems, especially in presence of chr...

In Europe's general context of economic integration, the National States have preserved a few competences. Among them, the most important competence is taxation management, which has now become an important lever to stabilize the State's budget and to meet the economic parameters set by the European Agreements. From this perspective, it is crucial...

In recent years the Italian tax system has been affected by significant changes. Important legislative reforms have revolutionized the relationship between citizens and public administration. These changes tried to simplify the relationship between citizens and public administration, reducing the burden of bureaucracy on the lives of citizens and b...

In this second part, the essay focuses on a real case about the functional decomposition of the application, already dealt in Part 1. The real case described here is about the system design process for the 2016 tax return certification compilation. The input elements of this functional decomposition process are the compilation instructions, the pro...

The Eco-design approach for new product development is becoming progressively more and more important for competitive and legislative reasons, especially in advanced markets (EU USA, East Asia, etc.). Its importance is increasingly growing since the decisions made in early design stages largely affect not only the cost but also the environmental im...

In the last few years, the Italian Welfare State has suffered from the effects of the serious economic crisis. The crisis has hastened the need to cut down the public expenditures. The current study focuses on the improvement of the effectiveness, the efficiency and the inexpensiveness of those processes related to the management of the tax service...

The economical sustainability and the integrity of oil field equipment depend on the choice of the best material for the working conditions. In oil wells, many environmental corrosion phenomena take place and affect the structural integrity of metallic parts and equipment. In order to investigate material properties in presence of corrosive environ...

In Italy, a continuous growth of nonprofit organizations has occurred in the last years. These organizations have been favoured by the concomitant reduction of direct public intervention (due to spending review) and the effect of the economic crisis on the business system. Despite their growth, nonprofit organizations present usually a critical lac...

In engineering design, the selection of material alternatives usually depends of different criteria based on the specific problem. Due to the different units of this criteria, a normalization process is needed in the selection model. A lot of normalization approach can be found in literature and at the same time many algorithms have been developed...

This paper describes the application of a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project to a winemaking process in a high-quality, Italian winery. LSS is used to focus on the problem through a quantitative analysis of waste and quality performances. The LSS basic algorithm (called “DMAIC”) helps to detect and quantify critical aspects of the process for transferrin...

The total quality management (TQM) principles have been successfully applied to private companies over the years: the present challenge is to apply this approach proficiently also to the public administrations (PAs) in order to improve the efficiency of their processes. The complexity of the PAs' processes, the lack of experience in the field of pr...

The eco-design approach for new product development is becoming progressively more and more important for market and legislative reasons especially in advanced markets (EU USA, East Asia, etc.). This paper analyzes through Axiomatic Design (AD) the potential capability of the meta-product approach connected with the use of a tailored Smart Eco-desi...

This paper presents a new model for process optimization based on the evaluation of the process coupling using Axiomatic Design (AD). The model developed allows the evaluation of the efficiency of a process thanks to the use of a Process Design Matrix. This matrix links the basic process activities considering them as elements of an oriented graph....

The paper presents the implementation of the GUID (Gauzes UWB Identifier) system to control the path of gauzes and other medical instruments during surgical operations. The system allows tracking of these devices during the entire surgery, with particular reference to real-time localization of gauzes within the patient's body. A precise localizatio...

Adaptive dampers are an interesting solution for conjugating the necessity of controllable devices and low power consumption. Magneto-rheological fluids (MRF) can be profitably employed in adaptive dampers because of the significant variation of fluid parameters with magnetic field properties. This paper focuses on the design process of an innovati...

The paper describes the analysis of the critical factors about a "coating of pellets" process using Design Of Experiments, tool able to balance costs and times of the experiments. The goal is the manufacturing optimization with as lower as possible necessary information: on statistical point of view the identification of the most significant factor...

In this work is presented the design of a rotational semi-active damper based on properties of magneto-rheological (MR) fluids. This technology permits to obtain a real time variation of damping characteristic of the suspension. The damper presented in this paper is specifically designed to be placed in the front-wheel suspension of Alfa Romeo 147...

The End-of-Life of Vehicles (ELV) represents a very important issue that pushed the European committee to define specific rules to manage it. At this proposal, the 2000/53/EC directive imposes to economic operators to attain a reuse and recovery target of 95% for all ELVs by January 2015 and within this, a target of 85% for reuse and recycling. Whi...

Sommario L'attività oggetto della presente memoria si inserisce nel contesto di quanto promosso dalla Comunità Europea nella Politica Integrata di Prodotto (IPP), con particolare riferimento alle problematiche legate alla gestione del fine vita nei settori automotive e delle apparecchiature elettriche ed elettroniche. In tale ambito il lavoro ha co...

An innovative approach has been used to design the front suspension of the Formula SAE race car of the Università degli Studi di Firenze. The critical review of the 2005 car showed that it's necessary to improve suspension reliability, reduce Time to Market and costs. DFSS is the only design methodology that allows to resolve these criticities inte...

The present work is concerned with modeling high frequency vibration in a simple structure through Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA). The structure is the benchmark used in the Italian National Project "Novel methods for the analysis and control of vibro-acoustic systems". The objective of this work is twofold: to test the sensitivity of the model...

Sommario Si vuole caratterizzare l'affidabilità utilizzando i dati messi a disposizione da ELASIS, Centro Ricerche Auto di Pomigliano d'Arco, relativi a difettosità di componenti e sistemi in rete assistenziale, durante il periodo di garanzia della vettura, per un generico sistema elettromeccanico. Con un modello di percorrenza chilometrica di tipo...

More and more companies are approaching environmental matters, motivated by the increasing interest of customers and by the need to be compliant to the directives of the European Community. The systematic integration of environmental matters in standard procedures of companies is showing many difficulties, mainly due to lack of useful methods and t...

Vehicle noise and vibration levels are basic parameters in passenger comfort. Both static and dynamic stiffness of sheet metal parts is commonly increased by means of stiffening ribs. Vibrations are also reduced by adding a layer of damping material on the floor, the roof, the firewall and other parts of the vehicle. In common practice the panels t...

In this paper the optimisation of the disassembly process is introduced, with particular reference to mechanical components. This is of great interest for operations such as maintenance and recycling. In particular, the search for the set of all possible disassembly sequences is analysed. This can be carried out starting from graphical representati...

SOMMARIO Il presente lavoro si propone di sviluppare una metodologia valida per l'ideazione e la realizzazione di un prodotto a basso impatto ambientale fin dalle prime fasi della progettazione. Tale scopo è stato raggiunto integrando i principi applicativi delle metodologie di progettazione ecocompatibile o Design for Environment (DfE), quali, in...

Design For Six Sigma is presented as a rigorous approach to designing products to ensure that they meet customer expectations. Design For Six Sigma and New Product Introduction methodologies are systematic and efficient ways to meet this challenge. Use of these methodologies can improve the overall product quality and shortening the global time to...

A new approach to the finite element simulation of the dynamic behavior of trimmed panels with an equivalent material is illustrated. By taking into account both the bending and membrane effects in a shell element, the proposed method overcomes the drawbacks of conventional methods, i.e., excessive calculation times and, in the case of software usi...

The application of non-optimized damping and phono-absorbent materials to automotive systems has not proved fully satisfactory in abating noise and vibration. The objective of this work was to develop a simple finite element modelling procedure that would allow optimizing structures such as a car body-in-white in terms of vibroacoustic behavior fro...

The authors discuss evaluating the dynamic behavior of robot structures in water. A procedure for predicting the structure's modal parameters in water using its modal parameters in air as a starting point is described and applied. The results, presented for simple structures but fully applicable to more complex ones, show that the problem of the st...

After a brief look at known concepts of dimensional analysis, the problem pointed out by the theorem of Buckingham concerning the determination of a complete system of dimensionless quantities pi is examined. There follows the formulation of a method to determine, in a general way, the dimensionless quantities pi relating to a certain physical prob...

Six Sigma is one of the most innovative and successful methodologies to have been introduced in recent years at an industrial level. The goal of this approach is to increase the efficiency of the company system and to generally reduce the costs involved in the production process. The instruments used are mainly statistical: a representative CTQ cha...