Structural Integrity of Welded Joints is a hot research topic still fundamental in many industrial strategic engineering applications. Recent advances in manufacturing processes have allowed to improve the fracture and fatigue strength of welded connections but still a lot can be done in this research field which has a high impact on large civil structures, mechanical components and a large variety products at different scale levels.

ESIS TC18 will shed light on the physical phenomena of fatigue and fracture of welded joints and develop effective criteria for the design of simple and complex welded connections under static and cyclic loading. Particular attention will be focused on the interaction between manufacturing parameters and the structural integrity of weldments which is a fundamental aspect for the proper design and realization of complex structures. Numerical modeling aimed at predicting residual stresses and distortions as well as advanced techniques for protecting against corrosion (as hot dip galvanization) will be also considered. Emphasis will be given to the effects of residual stresses on the fatigue strength. Recent progresses in multi-material joining will be also considered.

TC 18 will constantly provide an update state of the art about the design of welded joints, will generate guidelines aligned with the advances in the manufacturing processes and post-treatments able to improve the structural performances of welded joints.

A series of events will be organized including a dedicate biannual conference (ESIAM) together with TC15.

Some joint events will be organized together with ASTM.

Prof. Stojan Sedmak’s contribution to the activities of the Yugoslav Welding Association is also of great significance. He was the president until it was shut down in 2000 and during the Nineties he undertook editing of the Welder journal, later renamed to Welding and Welded Structures, the oldest welding related journal in the region. He was also the honorary member of Romanian Welding Society and a delegate in the tenth International Institute of Welding (IIW) committee which dealt with welded joint fracture mechanics. He was an acknowledged expert in IIW and took part in their annual Meetings a number of times.

In 2001, he founded the Serbian Society for Structural Integrity and Life, along with the journal “Structural Integrity and Life”. He served as the president of the Society and editor-in-chief of the journal until 2007. Thanks to a very active role of the Society in the scope of European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS), the European Conference on Fracture (ECF 22) was held in Belgrade, Serbia in 2018, coinciding with 50 years of fracture mechanics activities in the region. This is only the natural continuation of activities dating back to the ECF4 in Leoben in 1982, when Prof. Stojan Sedmak was the representative in European Group on Fracture (predecessor of ESIS) for the first time. The most important event in the meantime was the organisation of ECF9 in Varna in 1992, which was “mission impossible”, but was carried out successfully by Stojan and his team, under the sanctions of UN.

Prof. Paolo Lazzarin was born in Conegliano, Italy in 1957. After primary and secondary school in Treviso he moved to Padua to study Mechanical Engineering at the University of Padua. He graduated in 1982, with first class honors (cum laude). In 1986, he obtained his PhD in ‘Mechanical Behaviour of Materials’ at the University of Pisa for research on the asymptotic stress field of V‐notches and some pioneering studies on the fatigue behaviour of welded joints. In 1992, he became associate professor of ‘Machine Design’ at the University of Cassino and, afterwards, at the University of Ferrara. From 2000, he was a professor of Machine Design at the University of Padua where, from 2012, he was president of the Master course in Mechanical Engineering in Vicenza.

His research was mainly centered on theoretical studies of stress fields near sharp and blunt notches and fracture and fatigue assessment of materials in the presence of severe stress raisers. He made key contributions in notch mechanics, such as the development of a static and fatigue strength criterion for sharp and blunt notches based on advanced local approaches.

TC18 AWARDS