AIMS & SCOPE

The International Conference on Fatigue of Composites, ICFC, was founded in 1997. The first conference was held in Paris (Chairmen: C. Bathias and R. Fougeres), and has successfully been followed triennially by the second conference in Williamsburg (VA, USA, 2000, Chairman: K. Reifsnider). This series of conferences has brought outstanding progress in reviewing the present state of knowledge and providing forum to highlight fundamental and applied researches on the fatigue behavior of composite materials. We are pleased to announce that the third conference on Fatigue of Composites (ICFC-3) will be held in Kyoto.

Though composite materials have already obtained a certain position as structural materials for various industrial applications, the fundamental understandings and representations of their response to long-term durability are still fragmentary at best. ICFC-3 is concerned with experimental and analytical characterization for composite materials subjected to mechanical or/and thermal cyclic loads in conjunction with normal or extraordinary environments as well as modeling of fatigue behavior of composite materials in terms of long-term durability. Due to the vast growing of composite materials technology, the new fields of application such as electric devices, micro-machines and biomaterials are highly welcomed as well as the conventional structural applications. All types of composites (polymer, ceramic and metal based) will be addressed by the conference.




TOPICS

Fatigue of composite materials:
# Damage mechanisms: degradation process, contribution of mesoscopic components
# Influence of loading (mechanical, thermomechanical, multiaxial, loading spectra), rate effects, impact
# Modeling: damage mechanics, residual stiffness and strength, life prediction
# Manufacturing and processing effects: curing, machining, heat treatment, manufacturing defects, problems related to new processing method like RTM
# Testing and evaluation: test methods, data interpretation, sensors, nondestructive evaluation
# Industrial applications: predictive maintenance, failure analysis, accelerated testing, computer assisted design
# Damage tolerance