Tenth International Conference on Structures Under Shock and Impact
14 - 16 May 2008Algarve, Portugal
Overview and Opening Address
The tenth international conference of Structures Under Shock and Impact (SUSI 2008) took place recently in the Algarve, which was organised by the Wessex Institute of Technology. The conference attracted participants with a wide spectrum of expertise, working across a broad range of structural impact problems throughout industry and academia which are subject to impact and blast loadings.
SUSI08 follows on from the other successful meetings in the series which first started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (1989) and continued in Portsmouth, UK (1992); Madrid, Spain (1994); Udine, Italy (1996); Thessaloniki, Greece (1998); Cambridge, UK (2000); Montreal (2002); Crete (2004); and the New Forest, UK (2006). The resulting papers have been published in book form and distributed around the world. They have been also archived in the WIT eLibrary in WIT Transactions on the Built Environment (ISSN 1743-3509), where they are easily and permanently available to the international scientific community.
The meeting was opened by Professor Norman Jones, the co-chairman of the conference, who welcomed the delegates. The opening address was presented by Dr Bill Blain, Academic Director of the Wessex Institute of Technology, on behalf of Professor Carlos Brebbia, the Director of WIT, who unfortunately had a broken bone in his foot and was therefore unable to attend. The activities of WIT were described together with those of WIT Press, the publishing arm of the Institute. Dr Blain finished his presentation by describing the new accommodation facilities on campus.
Conference Sessions
This successful conference attracted good quality papers on the following topics:
- SUSI lectureImpact and blast loading characteristics
- Structural dynamics and impact behaviour
- Material response to high rate loading
- Energy absorbing and crashworthiness
- Behaviour of structural concrete
- Interaction between computational and experimental results
- Protection of structures from blast loads
Invited Presentations
The conference included good invited papers which were as follows:
- "Impact behaviour of pressurised pipelines" by N Jones & S Birch, University of Liverpool, UK.
- "Development of a device to increase the protection of vulnerable road users in the case of impact against heavy vehicles" by M Avalle, G Belingardi & A Giora, Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
- "High velocity impact of a composite sandwich panel" by M S Hoo Fatt & D Sirivolu, University of Akron, USA.
- "Analysis of the explosive loading of open-ended steel pipes" by N Rushton, G Schleyer & R Cheesman, University of Liverpool, UK.
- "The strain field history during plastic folding of a mild steel tube under axial loading", M R Said, A Rivai & M R Alkahari, University Teknical Malaysia Melaka, Malaysia.
- "Blast and impact resistance of ultra high performance fibre reinforced concrete beams and slabs" by G K Schleyer, S J Barnett, A Tyas, S G Millard & M N Soutsos, University of Liverpool, UK.
- "Verification of the dynamic characteristics of stack structure under wind load" by D Makovicka, J Král & D Makovièka Jr, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic.
- "Optimized calculation of high strain rate stress-strain curves" by P Verleysen & J Degrieck, Ghent University, Belgium.
International Scientific Advisory Committee
The meeting of the International Scientific Advisory Committee took place during the first evening of the conference over a dinner where members met and discussed the next conference in the series. The discussion included new topics and objectives of the conference, suggestions for other colleagues to be invited to join the committee and possible locations for the next conference.
Conference Dinner
The conference dinner took place at Porches Velhos Restaurant in the heart of Porches village a few miles from the conference centre. Delegates were transported by coach to the restaurant which in the past had been used as a wine store. The building dated back several centuries and still has its original bamboo cladded roof. The menu consisted of roast duck and excellent localTraditional Portugese Fado music at the Conference Dinner wines. During the dinner live music was provided by a Fado ensemble. As this was a joint dinner with delegates from the 4th international conference on High Performance Structures and Materials (HPSM 2008) both Prof Norman Jones and Prof Patrick de Wilde and (co-chairmen of SUSI and HPSM respectively) gave a short address to the delegates thanking them for their participation.
Publication of Papers
The proceedings of Structures Under Shock and Impact X, 416 pp (ISBN: 1-84564-107-8) are available in hard back from WIT Press priced at £137/US$274. Orders can be placed by telephone: +44 (0) 238 029 3223, fax: +44 (0) 238 029 2853, e-mail:
Papers from the conference will also be hosted online at the WIT eLibrary as volume 59 of WIT Transactions on the Built Environment (ISSN: 1743-3509). For more details visit the WIT eLibrary at: library.witpress.com