CMEM 2017

18th International Conference on Computational Methods and Experimental Measurements

4 - 6 July, 2017
Alicante, Spain

Overview

The 18th International Conference on Computational Methods and Experimental Measurements, organised by the Wessex Institute, with the collaboration of the University of Alicante and the University of Naples “Federico II, took place in Alicante, represented by Professors Carlos A Brebbia, Yolanda Villacampa and Giovanni Carlomagno respectively.

The meeting was sponsored by those organisations, the International Journal of Computational Methods and Experimental Measurements and the WIT Transactions on Engineering Sciences. This well-established series of conferences has a long and distinguished history, having started in Washington DC in 1981. It has been held in many different locations throughout the world, lastly in Opatija, Croatia in 2015.

The continuous improvement in computer efficiency, coupled with diminishing costs and the rapid development of numerical procedures have generated an ever-increasing expansion of computational simulations that permeate all fields of science and technology. As these procedures continue to grow in magnitude and complexity, it is essential to validate their results to be certain of their reliability. This can be achieved by performing dedicated and accurate experiments, which have undergone a constant and enormous development. At the same time, current experimental techniques have become more complex and sophisticated so that they require the intensive use of computers, both for running experiments as well as acquiring and processing the resulting data.

Opening the Conference

Giorgio Passerini, Professor and member of the Board of Directors of the Wessex Institute, opened the meeting on behalf of Prof Carlos A Brebbia, who was unable to attend. Giorgio started by welcoming the delegates and explaining the aims of WIT, ie providing a medium for the dissemination of knowledge transfer at an international level. This objective is achieved through a series of activities, including conferences, publications, training and research, and consultation services for industry.

WIT has developed a set of software codes that are used for a number of applications, in fields as diverse as energy, mechanical engineering, aerospace and others. Their continuous development is ensured by research. The codes are supported in terms of maintenance, as well as training, an activity which resulted in the Institute setting up an office in Boston to source the all-important USA industry.

All papers presented at the conferences are archived in Open Access format in the eLibrary of the Institute (www.witpress.com/elibrary) where they are easily accessible to the international community. WIT has also launched a series of international journals which cover new areas of interest, with emphasis on interdisciplinary topics.

Conference Topics

The papers presented at CMEM17 were classified under the following topics:

• Materials characterisation
• Applications
• Modelling and experiments
• Structural and stress analysis
• Computational and experimental methods

Invited Speakers

There were a series of invited lectures by well-known colleagues:

• “Excursus on some research performed with infrared thermography at Federico II”, by Giovanni Carlomagno, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy.
• “Relationship between shear plane of the final pressing and fatigue crack growth behaviour of round-bar specimens of CU processed by ECAP”, by Masahiro Goto, Oita University, Japan.
• “Deep drawing formability of magnesium sheet-metals”, Hidetoshi Sakamoto, Doshisha University, Japan.
• “Water renewal time and trace metal concentration in Civitavecchia Port (Rome), Italy”, by Giuseppe Zappala, National Research Council, Italy.
• “Combined experimental and numerical approach to model, design and optimize thermal processes”, by Yogesh Jaluria, Rutgers University, USA.
• “Finite element simulation of spherical indentation experiments”, by Stavros Syngellakis, Wessex Institute, UK.

Conference Proceedings

During the conference a technical excursion was arranged to the newly built Civil Engineering Research Laboratory at the University of Alicante.

The Civil Engineering Research building contains the following laboratories: Transport Engineering, Construction Materials, Durability and Structural and Soil Engineering. They have access to common facilities such as wet chambers with computer controlled environments and a furnace room with 1m3 capacity and up to 1000ºC able to simulate programmed heating curves. The central laboratory is 300m2 with a 50 kN crane bridge and a 100m2 reaction slab. On this strong floor, it is possible to anchor specimens to be tested with high versatility due to the anchor point’s matrix of 1x1m with a capacity of 500 kN per anchor point in tension and/or compression.

In this Central Laboratory, there are two high capacity porticos with hydraulic servo actuators of 700 kN and 2500 kN. The 2500 kN structure allows testing specimens up to 5m in height against vertical tensile and compression loads, while the 700 kN has the possibility to introduce vertical or horizontal loads with a height of between 1m and 5m, with a free light of 5m. Hydraulic actuators control this equipment so that their positioning in height from height 0.5m up to 5m in height is fully automated.

Conference Dinner

The conference banquet took place at the Casa Cesilia, a vineyard close to the historic centre of Novelda, near Alicante. Casa Cesilia was founded in 1707 at the time of the first Marquis de la Romana, as a farmhouse dedicated to the production of fruits, wine and oil of high quality. The delegates were given a tour of the vineyard with the opportunity of tasting the local wines, after which dinner was served in the restaurant. There the delegates were able to sample delicious regional dishes.

Closing the Conference

The Conference was closed by Giorgio Passerini who thanked the delegates in the name of Wessex Institute for coming to Alicante.

The success of the meeting will lead to it being reconvened in 2019.

Related Conferences 

• SUSI 2018, 4 - 6 June, 2018, Seville, Spain
• AFM 2018, 10 - 12 July, 2018, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• HPSM 2018, 11 - 13 July, 2018, Ljubljana, Slovenia