The meeting was organized by the Vice-Chairman of TC2, Otmar Kolednik (Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science of the Austrian Academy of Sciences), with the help of the Chairman of TC2, Jaroslav Pokluda (Brno University of Technology), and the Secretary of TC2, James Marrow (University of Oxford).
All of the 55 pre-registered participants from 12 European countries arrived at the meeting; most participants came from the Czech Republic (15), Austria (11), Germany (7), and Russia (5). Approximately 20 additional scientists working in Leoben attended single sessions of the conference. The program of the meeting was very dense, comprising 37 oral lectures and one invited keynote lecture.
The meeting was opened by the Chancellor of the Montanuniversität Leoben, Wilfried Eichlseder. Subsequently, Reinhard Pippan gave a short survey of the scientific work at Erich Schmid Institute, the host institute of the meeting. The scientific program started with two sessions in the area of fatigue, chaired by Reinhard Pippan and Jaroslav Polak (Institute of Physics of Materials, Brno). A session on modeling and new materials was chaired by James Marrow, followed by a session on nano-sized materials & atomisticmodelling, chaired by Stan Veprek. On Monday evening, the discussions were continued during a nice conference dinner in the traditional Arkadenhof brewery restaurant.
The program on Tuesday started with the invited keynote lecture, which was given by Stan Veprek (Technical University of Munich) on the mechanisms of plastic deformation and hardness enhancement in superhard nano-composites. The two following sessions dealt with micromechanisms of fracture in ceramic materials; these sessions were chaired by Jaroslav Pokluda and Michal Kotoul (Brno University of Technology). A session on metal fracture was chaired by Solveig Melin (Lund University), and the final session on welds & dynamic fracture was chaired by Andrey Shanyavskiy (State Center for Civil Aviation Flight Safety, Moscow).
In total, the delegates enjoyed a very successful meeting on the micro- and nano-mechanisms of fatigue and fracture with many interesting presentations and fruitful discussions. Jaroslav Pokluda, who has re-established TC2 after a long dormant period, announced that the next TC2-meeting will be held in June 1016, in form of a special session of the 8th International Conference on Materials Structure & Micromechanics of Fracture (MSMF8) in Brno.
Otmar Kolednik (Co-Chairman of TC2)
Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences
