The first conference in the ICEM series took place in Delft, The Netherlands, forty- five years ago in April, 1959. As an outcome of this conference a committee was formed with the task of ensuring that further conferences should be held at four-yearly intervals at a venue to be decided at the end of each conference. So began the conference series which has become the ICEM.
The experimental techniques, supporting technologies, materials available and engineering problems of 1959 were markedly different from those familiar to the stress analysts and engineers of today. The paper provides a review of the changes and developments since the Delft conference, as reflected by the successive conference programmes. It is written with the objective of placing on record the history of this important international event, so as to provide a source of reference for future conference organisers and a commentary on some of the major developments in the field of experimental mechanics over the second half of the 20th century.
The Stress Analysis Group of the Institute of Physics was established in the UK in 1946 for the purpose of providing a means of sharing information on research and developments in the field of experimental stress analysis and related topics. In 1959, with the help of The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and with the active cooperation of organisations in France, Germany (see footnote, Table 1) and Switzerland, the Group organised the Delft international conference. Following a discussion amongst the conference organisers, a meeting of national representatives was convened in Düsseldorf by Professor H. Fessler, UK, for the purpose of confirming the venue for the next conference and setting up an organising body for the conference series. A further meeting was held during the Paris conference in 1962 and at the next conference (Berlin, 1966) a formal constitution document was agreed for the Permanent Committee for Stress Analysis (PCSA), comprising representatives from twelve European countries and Israel (see Table 1).
The modus operandi was that the PCSA should choose the venue for the four-yearly conference. The appropriate body in the host country then took on responsibility for all aspects of the conference including publicity, organisation, selection of papers and publishing of the proceedings volume. The Chairman of the organising body became the Chairman of the PCSA with the responsibility of confirming and maintaining membership of the Permanent Committee, communicating with members and convening the next PCSA meeting at the forthcoming conference. The Permanent Committee could meet between conferences, at the request of the current chairman, for the purpose of offering comments and suggestions to the organisers. It has to be said that, by and large, the working of this scheme has been entirely satisfactory.
Some constitutional changes and innovations have been made over the years. At the 1974 meeting of the PCSA in Udine an “information exchange” with the American Society of Experimental Stress Analysis (SESA) was agreed and that body played a valuable supporting role in the Munich conference (1978) and in all subsequent conferences. Some constitutional changes were made in 1982 at the Haifa meeting but the modus operandi was not affected. At the Amsterdam meeting (1986) the objectives and interests of IMEKO (the International Measurement Confederation) were outlined to the Permanent Committee; it was also agreed that the title of the committee should not be changed but that the conference should be known in future as the International Conference on Experimental Mechanics, the ICEM. The Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) was welcomed as co-sponsor of the Copenhagen conference (1990) and has made a greatly appreciated contribution to the conferences since then. Also at the 1990 PCSA meeting, it was agreed that the committee name should be changed to the European Permanent Committee for Experimental Mechanics (EPCEM).
Most recently, proposals for a new constitution, prepared by a EPCEM Working Group, were debated at length at the Oxford meeting of the committee in 1998. The proposals were eventually approved with agreed amendments. From the date of the revised constitution (August 1998), in which the objectives of the committee and the responsibilities of its chairman were clarified, the EPCEM became known as the European Association for Experimental Mechanics (EURASEM). The conference title and the basic modus operandi remained unchanged.
Table 1: EURASEM* member countries (1998)| Austria (1986)** | Belgium | Danemark | Estonia (1994) | France | Germany*** | Greece (1982) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland (1994)** | Israel | Italy | The Netherlands | Norway | Poland (1986) | Portugal |
| Roumania (1990)** | Spain | Sweden | Switzerland | UK | USSR (1990)**** |
The dates and venues of the succession of conferences which followed the Delft conference are given in Table 2, together with the number of papers included in the programme and the number of registered attendees where this information is available. Comments on the individual conferences follow.
Table 2 The Conference Series| Date | Venue | Papers | Delegates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 (April) | Delft, The Netherlands | 51 | |
| 1962 | Paris, France | ||
| 1966 | Berlin, Germany | ||
| 1970 (6-10 April) | Cambridge, UK | 42 | 334 |
| 1974 (27-31 May) | Udine, Italy | 54 | 261 |
| 1978 (18-22 Sept) | Munich, Germany | 136 | 261 |
| 1982 (23-27 Aug) | Haïfa, Israel | 57 | 131 |
| 1986 (12-16 May) | Amsterdam, The Netherlands | 68 | 135* |
| 1990 (20-24 Aug) | Copenhagen, Denmark | 236 | 262** |
| 1994 (18-22 Jul) | Lisbon, Portugal | 241 | 271 |
| 1998 (24-28 Aug) | Oxford, UK | 219 | 380 (approx) |
| 2004 (29 Aug – 2 Sept) | Bari, Italy | ||
| 2007 (1–6 July) | Alexandroupolis, Greece |