TC Updates

Spring 2025 TC4 meeting 

The Spring 2025 TC4 meeting will be held online on the 20th of March 2025.

Fall 2024 TC4 meeting 

The Fall 2024 TC4 meeting will be held in Dublin (NL) at the University College Dublin on the 26 and 27th of September 2024.

Spring 2024 TC4 meeting 

The Spring 2024 TC4 meeting will be held online on the 10th of April 2024.

ESIS TC4 conference

The 9th International conference on Fracture of Polymers, Composites and Adhesives will take place from the 24th to the 27th of March 2020 in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. 

Fall 2023 TC4 meeting 

The Fall 2023 TC4 meeting will be held in Enschede (NL) at the University of Twente on the 28 and 29th of September 2023.

Spring 2023 TC4 meeting 

The Spring 2023 TC4 meeting will be held online on the 13th of April 2023.

Fall 2022 TC4 meeting 

The Fall 2022 TC4 meeting will be held in les Diablerets (Switserland) on the 29 and 30th of September 2022.

TC4 mini symposium at ECF-23 Madeira 

The ECF23 (Funchal, Madeira) is tacking place from the 27th of June to the 1st of July 2022. 

 Within this Conference, Bamber Blackman and Andreas Brunner have proposed a minisymposium, titled ‘Fracture testing of novel and advanced polymer-based materials with new or unconventional methods’.  (https://www.ecf23.eu/thematic-symposia/ ). Abstract submission is opened until March 28.

Polymers and polymer-based materials play an increasingly important role in many industrial sectors, ranging from civil engineering and aerospace to general transportation as well as medical or sports and leisure applications. Their mechanical properties, e.g., density, stiffness, or toughness as well as their size cover several orders of magnitude. Depending on the specific properties or material combinations, established fracture mechanics test methods may not be applicable for characterizing the fracture behavior of such materials, parts, or components. Contributions dealing with new experimental approaches or testing and modelling will be considered.  

February  2022: Spring 2022 TC4 meeting 

The Spring 2022 TC4 meeting will be held online on the 29 and 30th of March 2022.

July  2021: Fall 2021 TC4 meeting 

The Fall 2021 TC4 meeting will be held online on the 30th of September 2021.

April  2021: ESIS TC4 conference 

The 9th International conference on Fracture of Polymers, Composites and Adhesives which was to be held from the 26th to the 30th of September 2021 in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, is cancelled and replaced by an online event; the 1st Virtual conference on Fracture of Polymers, Composites and Adhesives, and will take place from the the 28th to the 29th September 2021..

February  2021: Spring 2021 TC4 meeting 

The Spring 2021 TC4 meeting which was to be held at the University of Twente in the Netherlands from the 7th to the 9th of April 2021 is replaced by an online version. The meeting will take place on the 8th of April.

July  2020: Fall 2020 TC4 meeting 

The Fall 2020 TC4 meeting which was to be held in Les Diablerets is replaced by an online version. The meeting will take place on the 11th of September.

June 2020: ESIS TC4 conference

The 9th International conference on Fracture of Polymers, Composites and Adhesives to take place from the 6th to the 10th of September 2020 in Les Diablerets, Switzerland and cancelled and will take place in September 2021, from the the 26th to the 30th. 

April 2020: TC4 mini symposium at VEFC1 

Due to the Covid-19, the ECF23 (Funchal, Madeira) has been postponed to 2022. In order to keep alive the connection between European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS) and its community, this 1st Virtual European Conference on Fracture (VECF1) has been organized. The event will be held online with a similar timetable of the ECF23. 

 Within this Conference, Zoltan Major and Andreas Brunner have proposed a minisymposium, titled ‘ESIS TC4 Fracture and fatigue of polymers and polymer composites: Industrial Perspectives and Applications in the Digital Age’.  (https://www.vecf1.eu/home/symposia )

The minisymposium will focus on industrial applications of fracture mechanics research for polymers and polymer composites.

In addition to the conventional topics - experimental fracture and fatigue fracture analysis of parts or structural components and application of non-destructive test methods for investigating fracture behavior in an industrial environment - the symposium focusses on the proper combination and extension of experiments with novel modelling and simulation approaches and methods.

The modelling focuses on the application and extension of the integrative computational materials engineering methodology to fracture and fatigue relevant problems of polymeric and polymer composite components. Virtual material testing with fracture mechanics concepts, the application and problems of virtual allowables for composite structures and the implementation of data science based predictive methods for fracture assessment are some of the many novel areas of interest of the mini symposium. 

April 2020: Spring 2021 TC4 meeting 

The Spring 2021 TC4 meeting will be held at the University of Twente , The Netherlands, from the 7th to the 9th  of April 2021.

March 2020: Spring 2020 TC4 meeting canceled. 

Due to the very rapid escalation of the coronavirus outbreak across Europe, and the restrictions to travel which have been accumulating daily, we have regrettably taken the decision to cancel the next TC4 meeting which was scheduled to take place at the University of Twente between 1st -3rd April 2020.  

We did explore postponing the meeting by one or two months, but with the health crisis expected to last until at least mid-summer, it was difficult to define a date.  As such, it is most likely that this meeting will move forward by one year, and we will try again to hold a TC4 meeting at the University of Twenty in Spring 2021.  However, this will be confirmed in a latter stage.