Principal investigator R.Bendikienė has been working in the field of ferrous, non-ferrous metals, wood, and polymers processing, testing and analysis, development and implementation of multifunctional coatings since 1994. In 1999, she defended her PhD thesis on “Digital Metallographic Evaluation of Carbide Phase Morphology”. 97 scientific articles are published so far, 58 of them in the journals indexed in the Web of Science with an impact factor, h13. In recent years, the main area of scientific interest has been researching the properties of metal alloys, the formation of high wear-resistant layers and coatings with exceptional properties, the application of welding technologies to form coatings with special properties, and mechanical tests. The results of scientific research have been presented at international and national conferences. The PI actively works with young scientists, and every year, with master’s degree students, she participates in the young researchers’ Conference “Industrial Engineering”, announcing the latest scientific achievements. She is the chair of the Technical Committee of the Lithuanian Standards Board; the Member of the Mechanical Engineering field PhD committee; the chairman of the International Conference on Materials Engineering and Modern Manufacturing organized by the Kaunas University of Technology, and a member of University Council. R. Bendikiene was a consultant of extern who successfully defended PhD thesis Research on Wood Milling Tool Wear and Evaluation of Milled Surface Quality in 2019; 5 scientific papers. From 2017 to 2019 she was a supervisor of a postdoctoral student; 9 scientific papers were published in Q1-Q2 journals in the area of recycling and remanufacturing of computer boards and electronic devices. At present, she supervises the work of last year’s doctoral student in the Mechanical Engineering field; the topic of the dissertation “Evaluation and validation of laser welding process of high-performance glass fiber-reinforced composite parts” and pays a lot of attention to developing the topics of the third-year doctoral student “Study of aluminium alloy behaviour during non-destructive joining process“. In the last five years, R. Bendikiene was four times the chairperson of the doctor's thesis defence council, and six times a member of the council. Dissertation topics are related to the application and research of various materials and technological processes, where the researcher has the most experience.
Over the years of scientific work, she has become an expert in these areas: formation of reinforced coatings, microalloying, modelling of the coating composition, evaluation and research on the wear of tools, processing of wood and wood products, microstructure analysis of various alloys, use of secondary raw materials for abrasion resistant coatings, circular economy principles in manufacturing and production, green and sustainable manufacturing, recycling and recovery of metals.