Contact Dr Andrea Spinelli
Areas of expertise
- Aircraft Design
- Computing, Simulation & Modelling
- Gas Turbines & Propulsion
- Systems Engineering
Background
Andrea Spinelli is a Research Fellow at Cranfield University in the topic of Engineering Design for complex systems, specifically focusing on probabilistic design space exploration methodologies and machine-learning based methods for multi-disciplinary optimisation.
He graduated from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in 2020 with a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineerign and a M.Sc. in Aeronautical Engineering, focusing on aircraft propulsion and aerodynamics. His Master Thesis titled "A study of unconventional wings and tails" presents a multi-disciplinary parametric analysis of non-elliptical lift distributions, and their application on a business jet. The proposed design had a Vee tail, which required stability and control analysis. The final outcome was a 10% reduction in fuel burn over the reference aircraft.
His PhD was sponsored by the EU-funded FutPrint50 project, whose goal is to understand the key technologies and system interactions to accelerate the introduction of a hybrid-electric 50 seater regional turboprop airplane. He has devised a Design-Space Exploration methodology by combining Set-Based Design and Multidisciplinary Optimisation, allowing to reduce the computational cost by 80%. This methodology has been applied on the investigation of optimal energy management strategies, which is being used to drive the design of a 50 seater hybrid-electric turboprop by FutPrint50 partners.
Currently he is working to extend the developed framework by including further uncertainty analysis for the Airbus-sponsored ONEHeart project.
Research opportunities
Probabilistic and Causal-based Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Multi-Disciplinary Optimisation
Systems Engineering Design
Aircraft Design
Current activities
Research is currently focused on:
Application of Set-Based design with Multidisciplinary Optimization for supporting designer decisions in complex integrated systems.
Development of a Bayesian network approach for requirements analysis and decision-making support in setting up engineering optimisation problems.
Clients
- Airbus SE
Publications
Articles In Journals
- Spinelli A, Krupa GP, Kipouros T, Laskaridis P & Berseneff B. (2025). Battery pack technological considerations for hybrid-electric regional aircraft feasibility. The Aeronautical Journal, 129(1335)
- Spinelli A & Kipouros T. (2024). PDOPT: A Python library for Probabilistic Design space exploration and OPTimisation. Journal of Open Source Software, 9(95)
- Spinelli A, Balaghi Enalou H, Zaghari B, Kipouros T & Laskaridis P. (2022). Application of probabilistic set-based design exploration on the energy management of a hybrid-electric aircraft. Aerospace, 9(3)