2002 IUTAM General Assembly U.S. Delegation Report

The General Assembly of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics was held in Cambridge, UK, on August 16-18, 2002. The delegation from the USA consisted of Ronald J. Adrian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Chair; Hassan Aref, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Carl T. Herakovich, University of Virginia; L. Gary Leal, University of California-Santa Barbara; and Jan Achenbach, Northwestern University. Professor Achenbach who was attending the meeting as a member of the symposium panel substituted, with official permission, for Ted B. Belytschko.

The IUTAM has fifty-one adhering organizations. The General Assembly voted to add the International Congresses on Thermal Stress (ICTS), and to suspend the membership of the Kazakhstan Adhering Organization for lack of dues payment over the last six years. In response to a request from ICSU it voted to encourage future symposia to identify significant scientific issues and to forward these issues to ICSU for discussion and dissemination.

The General Assembly voted to accept the proposal for an IUTAM Symposium in 2004 entitled “Recent Advances in Dispersed Multiphase Flows Simulation”, to be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and chaired by S. Balachandar and A. Prosperetti. The Assembly declined to accept a proposal entitled “Analytical Basis Computation in Mechanics” from New York, NY, but encouraged the proposer to resubmit the proposal at a later date in an improved form.

The IUTAM has four standing scientific committees and five working parties. It was voted to discontinue the standing committees and to enlarge the number of working parties. New working parties were established in the fields of biomechanics, micro and nanoscale phenomena, geophysical and environmental fluid mechanics and solid mechanics, and education in mechanics and capacity building.

New members elected to the Congress committee are: T. Belytschko (USA), M. Hayes (Ireland), D. Beskos (Greece), E. Kreuzer (Germany), F. Ellyin (Canada), E. Tuck (Australia), and M. Velarde (Italy). The new member of the Fluid Mechanics Panel is Dan Henningson (Sweden).

The next General Assembly will be held during the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in 2004, on the Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon of that week in Warsaw, Poland.

H. Aref suggested that adhering members consider bringing the subject of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics to the attention of the general populus in their countries by seeking to establish the last day of August as “TAM Day”, in their country. The General Assembly agreed to take this suggestion under advisement.

Submitted by
Ronald J. Adrian, chair of the U.S. delegation
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign