In memoriam: Professor Lorenzo Iannucci

Professor Lorenzo Iannucci

Lorenzo Iannucci – 11 October 1958 to 17 July 2023

The Department of Aeronautics has received the sad news that Professor Lorenzo Iannucci, Professor of Advanced Structural Design and Airbus-Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair passed away on Monday 17 July 2023.

Lorenzo joined the Department as an academic member of staff in October 1997. His connection with the Department of Aeronautics, however started long before that as he completed his undergraduate and Master’s courses here before starting his career in industry. His background in working on the industrial applications of aeronautical engineering were a huge asset to the department and Lorenzo was awarded an impressive two Royal Academy of Engineering Industry Chairs with two different companies; the first with DSTL and the second with Airbus. Beyond his outstanding qualities in research, Lorenzo was also recruited to teach Airframe Design, a role which the Department had found incredibly challenging to fill and he continued to deliver this course to UG and MSc students for more than 25 years.

Lorenzo's research expertise lay in high-speed impact. Much of this was focussed on bird-strike (and more recently drone-strike) for composite aircraft and he developed an outstanding reputation for modelling of high-speed impact events, embracing finite element and meshless (SPH) methods. He was also one of the pioneers in the development of physically-based failure criteria for modelling damage initiation and propagation in composite structures.

In addition to the civil aviation sector, Lorenzo also worked with the automotive sector (on crashworthiness of composites) and with the defence sector, including modelling the threat of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) to army personnel vehicles and how to protect these against this threat. The impact of his research has genuinely been responsible for saving lives in areas of conflict.

Lorenzo’s students and researchers have spoken about how much they enjoyed their regular catch-ups and how these meetings would often result in deep-diving into numerous engineering problems. Many of those who have since graduated or moved onto new roles credit Lorenzo with the direction and indeed success of their careers.

It is Lorenzo’s kindness and permanent smile that will be most missed and our community is so much poorer for his loss. We send our condolences to all of Lorenzo’s family and friends as well as his colleagues and students past and present.