Introduction

The use of novel materials and new structural concepts nowadays is not restricted to highly technical areas like aerospace, aeronautical applications or the automotive industry, but affects all engineering fields including those such as civil engineering and architecture.

The conference addresses issues involving advanced types of structures, particularly those based on new concepts or new materials and their system design. Contributions will highlight the latest development in design, optimisation, manufacturing and experimentation in those areas. The meeting also aims to help the search for higher performance sustainable materials, which are now receiving increased attention.

Most high performance structures require the development of a generation of new materials, which can more easily resist a range of external stimuli or react in a non-conventional manner.

Particular emphasis will be placed on intelligent structures and materials as well as the application of computational methods for their modelling, control and management.

The conference also addresses the topic of design optimisation. Contributions on numerical methods and different optimisation techniques are also welcome, as well as papers on new software. Optimisation problems of interest to the meeting involve those related to size, shape and topology of structures and materials.

Optimisation techniques have much to offer to those involved in the design of new industrial products. The formulation of optimum design has evolved from the time it was purely an academic topic, able now to satisfy the requirements of real life prototypes. The development of new algorithms and the appearance of powerful commercial computer codes with easy to use graphical interfaces, has created a fertile field for the incorporation of optimisation in the design process in all engineering disciplines.

This scientific event is a new edition of the High Performance Design of Structures and Materials conference and follows the success of a number of meetings on structures and materials and on optimum design that originated in Southampton as long ago as 1989. As the meetings evolved they gave rise to the current series, which started in Seville in 2002, and followed by Ancona in 2004, Ostend in 2006, the Algarve in 2008, Tallinn in 2010 and the New Forest, home of the Wessex Institute of Technology in 2012. The forum also incorporates the Optimum Design of Structures conference that started in 1989 in Southampton and took place then in Boston in 1991, Zaragoza in 1993, Miami in 1995, Rome in 1997, Orlando in 1999, Bologna in 2001, Detroit in 2003, Skiathos in 2005, Myrtle Beach in 2007, Algarve in 2009 and New Forest in 2012.

The meeting will provide a friendly and useful forum for the interchange of ideas and interaction amongst researchers, designers and scholars in the community to share advances in High Performance and Optimum Design of Structures and Materials.