Iberian Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity – CIFIE’2010

Citation

de Castro, P.M.S.T. and Guinea, G.V. (2010), "Iberian Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity – CIFIE’2010", International Journal of Structural Integrity, Vol. 1 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijsi.2010.43601daa.001

Iberian Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity – CIFIE’2010

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Structural Integrity, Volume 1, Issue 4

About the Guest Editors

Paulo M.S.T. de CastroHolds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Porto, an MSc from Imperial College London, and a PhD from Cranfield Institute of Technology, UK. Paulo M.S.T. de Castro is a full-time Professor at the University of Porto, a researcher of IDMEC – FEUP and member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. He has more than 25 years of experience in his main research area: fracture, fatigue and structural integrity.

Gustavo V. GuineaProfessor of Materials Science at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, where he obtained his MSc and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering in 1986 and 1990, respectively. He also holds an MSc in Physics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid where he graduated in 1988. Among other prizes, he was awarded the RILEM’s Robert L’Hermite Medal in 1993, and in 2006 he was appointed to Correspondent Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences. Since 2002, he has been the President of the Spanish Structural Integrity Society. He is an expert on mechanical behavior and fracture of structural materials and has relevant research experience in characterization and modeling of mechanical properties and microstructure of biological fibers and soft tissues.

Portugal and Spain have an established tradition of periodical scientific meetings on the areas of fracture, fatigue and structural integrity. The Spanish Conferences on Fracture are organized by the Grupo Español de Fractura and are held every year, whereas the Portuguese Conferences on Fracture are held every two years in the context of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Materiais. Occasionally, joint Spanish-Portuguese conferences are organized, such as the 4th joint meeting “Iberian Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity 2010 – CIFIE’2010” held on March 17-19, 2010 at the campus of Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto – FEUP, in Porto, Portugal.

Portugal is a country associated to developments in fracture research since the 1970s and 1980s of last century. Among examples of related events in Portugal, the early 5th European Conference on Fracture, organized in 1984 in the context of the European Group on Fracture (predecessor of ESIS), the 6th International Conference Biaxial/Multiaxial Fatigue and Fracture, 2001, the 1st International Conference on Engineering Failure Analysis ICEFA-1, 2004, or a considerable number of more recent events of the European Mechanics Society (EUROMECH) may be mentioned.

After an initial period in the 1970s, dedicated to the creation and promotion of a critical mass of researchers, when Portuguese students had scholarships to obtain doctorates abroad particularly in the UK and France, the subsequent decades witnessed the steady development of the research capacity in Portugal. A clear sign of the increasing internationalization of the R&D activities in Portugal is the growth of international publications and participation in EU projects, or the frequent stays in Portuguese universities of post-doctoral researchers and visiting professors through programmes such as the EU “Marie Curie”, the US Fulbright Commission or the NATO post-doctoral scholarships, among others. Fatigue and fracture research in Portugal was the object of a special issue of the journal Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures – Vol. 27, September 2004 – with Professor Paulo M.S.T. de Castro acting as Guest Editor.

The Iberian Conference on Fracture and Structural Integrity 2010 – Conferência Ibérica de Fractura e Integridade Estrutural, CIFIE’2010 – has brought together researchers and professionals, who during three days, shared their knowledge and experience in such fields as analytical and numerical methods; case studies of fracture, fatigue and durability; durability of structures; experimental techniques; fatigue of materials and structures; deformation and fracture of materials (metallic alloys, ceramics, composites, polymeric and bio) and interaction with the environment.

In addition, CIFIE’2010 had keynote speakers: Prof. Ky Dang Van, formerly Research Director at the Laboratoire de Mecanique at the École Polytechnique (Paris, France), Prof. Eann A. Patterson, Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University (USA) and Editor of the Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design and the Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures, Prof. Nikos Stergiopulos, Director at the Hemodynamics and Cardiovascular Technology Laboratory at the École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne (Switzerland) and Mr Michael Windisch, Head of Fracture Mechanics Department at MT Aerospace AG (Augsburg, Germany).

Extended versions of selected papers submitted at the CIFIE’2010 conference are included in this special issue of the International Journal of Structural Integrity.

As one of the major topics favoured in the conference, four papers dealing with the provision of information for increasing the safety of materials and structures were selected. The first paper (Luis Reis, Bin Li, and Manuel De Freitas) focuses on the fatigue behaviour of a high-grade steel and the second paper (F.J.P. Reis, L. Malcher, F.M. Andrade Piros, and J.M.A. César de Sá) is concerned with the development of a model to predict ductile fracture at low triaxiality. The last two papers deal with the determination of fracture parameters; the first of three (R. Branco, J.M. Silva, V. Infante, F. Antunes, and F. Ferreira) explores the possibility of using a standard specimen with reduced thickness to obtain plane-strain fracture parameters and the last paper (V. Richter-Trummer, P.M.G.P. Moreira, S.D. Pastrama, M.A.P. Vaz, and P.M.S.T de Castro) discusses the in situ obtention of the stress intensity factor by optical methods.

The editors are most grateful to Chris Rodopoulos, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Structural Integrity for the support and collaboration. Our thanks are also due to the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto for their support, as well as to the companies INSTRON, ZWICK ROELL, WALTER+BAI and the institutions Fundação Luso Americana, Portugal, and Universidade do Porto for their financial support. Finally, we want to thank the authors of the articles and the reviewers.

Paulo M.S.T. de Castro, Gustavo V. GuineaGuest Editors