✍ Scribed by F.L. Chernous’ko; A.V. Manzhirov; I.V. Simonov
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
At the end of summer of 2008, scientists and engineers from around the world gravitated towards Adelaide, the capital city of Southern Australia. Here, from 24 to 29 August 2008, the XXII International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM 2008) took place, and meetings of the General Assembly of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) were also held. The venue chosen for ICTAM 2008 was the Adelaide Convention Centre, a large modern complex in the centre of town. ICTAM is the largest and most impressive event in the engineering calendar and is held every four years. It was last held in Warsaw, Poland, in 2004. At the XXII International Congress there were over 1500 applications, and about 1000 papers were presented by scientists from 70 countries. These were divided into plenary papers (two in all, at the opening and at the end of the Congress, each lasting 1 hour), section papers (each lasting 45 minutes), lecture papers (each lasting 20 minutes), and seminar papers (each lasting 3 minutes). The authors of the latter papers were also given the opportunity to present a poster report.
At the opening, the president of the Congress, E. Tuck, and other officials spoke. Representatives of the aboriginal community performed a short programme with musical accompaniment. The scientific programme began with a paper given by J. Hutchinson (USA), "The role of mechanics in advancing thermal barrier coatings", which was devoted to research on multilayer coatings used in the high-temperature parts of aviation and power-generation gas turbines. These coatings consist of a layer of a porous ceramic substance with low thermal diffusivity, a thin layer of aluminium, which serves as a barrier to oxidation processes, and a metal layer to bond the coating to the alloy. Theoretical and experimental results of investigations of the thermal and mechanical properties of coatings and of the influence of their microstructure on the macroscopic properties were presented.
We will mention some of the most interesting sections and lecture papers. On the opening day of the Congress, the meeting of the "Hydrodynamics of Swimming and Flight" section was extremely interesting. Here, three 40 minute review papers were presented. In the paper by J. Wang (USA), "How insects fly", the mechanism of lift during the flight of winged insects such as dragonflies, flies, etc., was analysed. The paper was illustrated with a large amount of video material (obtained by high-speed photography). The paper given by D. Weihs (Israel), "Fish swimming dynamics: knowns and unknowns", was devoted to a study of the kinematic and dynamic processes of the movement of fish in ideal and viscous liquids. The principal question here was: how are forces of thrust and resistance created during the swimming of fish, and how are they related? In the paper given by L. Fauci (USA), "Understanding swimming at low Reynolds numbers: successes and challenges", methods by which bacteria and microorganisms move in liquid media were examined. For these organisms the Reynolds numbers are very low, and the mechanism of their movement differs greatly from the mechanism of the swimming of fish and the flight of insects. The results of an analytical investigation and computer modelling were given, as well as data of observations. All three papers were very well prepared and were accompanied by a large number of video illustrations, and they combined clear mechanical models with the results of computer modelling; furthermore, well-thought-out reviews of results and problems in this field were given. Unfortunately, in Russia, inadequate attention has obviously been paid to work on biomechanics as a whole and on the avenue of research touched upon in particular.
A series of interesting papers was given in the "Control of Structures" section. In the paper by S. Krenk (Denmark), "Design of resonant vibration absorbers with filtered feedback", a procedure for selecting the optimal parameters of two types of filter for resonant vibration absorbers was proposed. It was shown that, with the recommended selection of parameters, a considerable improvement in system response is achieved. The paper given by H. Dankowicz (USA), "Controlled onset of low-velocity collisions in vibro-impacting systems with friction", was devoted to the dynamics of a system with a dry friction element. A theoretical analysis and the results of experiments were given. In the paper of Academician F. Chernous'ko (Russia), "Mobile systems controlled by internal moving masses", the results of recent work by the author on the dynamics of systems with internal moving masses were presented. In the paper given by F. Ashida (Japan), "Optimum control of thermal stress in a piezocomposite disc", a multilayer disc of composite material subjected to heating by electrodes was investigated. The problem was to find the optimal structure of the multilayer disc in order to lower the temperature stresses in the material. It proved possible to reduce the maximum stress by 34%. In the paper of H. Hu (China), "Equilibrium stabilization via position and delayed position
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