PSI - Issue 28

Francesco Iacoviello et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 28 (2020) 1–2 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000–000

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Specifically: To foster research and collaboration into the prevention of failure of engineering materials, components and structures under mechanical loadings and associated phenomena. To encourage interdisciplinary research into the physical behaviour of engineering components, materials and structures. To develop new testing methods, numerical methods, and engineering estimation methods for structural integrity assessment. To improve engineering designs. To improve manufacturing, inspection and maintenance procedures. To develop methods for interpretation of material property data, probabilistic assessment and tools for failure prevention and management. To disseminate knowledge, by means of scientific publications, procedure documents, and referring developments to national and international code-making bodies where relevant. To educate young engineers and scientists in structural integrity matters. In order to achieve these ambitious goals, ESIS is structured in about thirty National Groups and about twenty Technical Committees, and in the last decades organized dozens of international events, publishing dozens of Proceedings and Technical notes, special issues and about thirty issues on Procedia Structural Integrity as well as YouTube channel with thousands of videopresentations and lectures from the last few summer schools. The main ESIS event is the European Conference on Fracture (ECF): this is a biennial conference that is usually organized by a National Group at beautiful venues in Europe. The previous ECF event was organized in 2018 in Belgrade, Serbia, and in 2020 the ECF23 was scheduled in Funchal, Madeira (Portugal). But, unfortunately … “no one expects the Spanish Inquisition”! … at the beginning of 2020, the problems connected to the Covid 19 forced the ESIS Executive Committee to postpone the ECF23 in Funchal to 2022 and, for the first time in the ESIS history, the ExCo decided to organize a Virtual ECF and a virtual Summer School, using the Google Suite platform. It was necessary to create a new paradigm for the organization of these virtual events. The ExCO decided to: - Organize the largest summer school ever organized by ESIS. All the Technical Committees were encouraged to organize one day on the basics of their topics … eleven TCs accepted the challenge and organized one day of activity each, ranging from Fatigue to Numerical Methods, from Polymers to Concrete. Almost all the presentations were recorded and they are available in the dedicated playlist in the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqdhWx9Ll8U7DJNegq0qoQl0aK8VXqExk Participants were allowed to register to different activities, in a sort of “à la carte” summer school. The result was really exciting: about two hundred and fifty participants were registered to the different activities organized in the frame of the ESIS summer school, the 1 st Virtual ESIS Summer School (VESS1). - Organize a Virtual ECF, trying to improve as much as possible the importance of the discussions. For this reason, all the participants were invited to upload their presentations before the conference and watch the videopresentations of interest before the conference. All the videopresentations are available in the dedicated YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqdhWx9Ll8U7Hrv_Hu-qLFAXE7QM-A2RT Furthermore, in the case of the Virtual ECF, the Technical Committees support was crucial: nine prestigious invited lecturers, twenty sessions, 320 presentations, more than four hundred participants and really interesting and engaging discussions were the final results of the 1 st Virtual European Conference on Fracture (VECF1). The ESIS Ex-Co wishes to warmly acknowledge all the invited lecturers, all the Technical Committees Chairpersons, all the participants, all the sessions chairpersons: without their enthusiastic help, it would not have been possible to organize these two events in a few months. We also thought that publishing Procedia Structural Integrity after VECF1 is a “must do” activity, so we have invited all presenting authors to submit a paper. To our great satisfaction, 274 papers are submitted, proving once again great success of this event. We are all enthusiastic about these great results but … we are looking forward to meeting our community again in presence at the first possible occasion and, the most enthusiastically, in Funchal, in 2022, for the ECF23. The 2018-2022 ESIS Executive Committee