The University of Bologna (UniBo) is claimed to be the oldest academia in the world, being founded in 1088 A.D. It has a strong tradition in research and education in almost every field of the human knowledge. More than 100 Departments and Research Centres, 23 Faculties and around 100,000 students are the main features of the University of Bologna. Its annual budget is approximately 700 M€. It has a potential number of 5500 people committed to research activity with an estimated budget of more than 60M€. Since 1992, a full set of resources and experiences in mechanical and aerospace research were also established and are now gathered together inside the School of Engineering – Forlì Campus, a town located 65km south-east of Bologna. The Faculty is located alongside the International Airport of Forlμ, and that allowed the laboratory facilities to be established in a Hangar inside the airport, where many research activities are being carried out. Among the facilities, it must be cited two autoclaves for composite production, several testing machines and top-level hardware for computational/FEM analyses in different research areas. The Faculty has wide international cooperation and strong industrial partnerships. Research projects and programmes are carried out in a wide range of fields of materials sciences.
The University of Bologna will be represented in UMA3 by the Interdepartmental Center for Industrial Research on Aerospace (CIRI Aeronautica, in brief). Established in 2010 within the project Emilia-Romagna Regional Technopole Network, CIRI Aeronautica develops industrial research projects in the Hi-Tech sectors with particular reference to the areas of Aeronautics and Space, exploiting the synergies between the expertise available in the Departments of the University of Bologna to promote basic and industrial research and technology transfer. CIRI Aeronautica currently consists of about 30 research staff, including UniBO faculty members and full-time researchers.
It gathers knowledge, competences and skills in mechanical engineering and aeronautics, lightweight structures, new composite and metallic materials and processing in a single centre equipped with advanced infrastructures and research labs. UniBo will take advantage of the competence and expertise developed in years of research activities in the field of composite and light alloys processing and testing: this expertise derives from the merging within CIRI of different centers of competences, deriving from research in the field of Manufacturing Technologies, Material Science and Material Testing.