The Fourth European Conference on Structural Dynamics (EURODYN’99) was held in Prague, Czech Republic, between 7-10 June 1999. The first three EURODYN conferences took place in Bochum, Germany (1990), in Trondheim, Norway (1993) and in Florence, Italy (1996). This is a major conference on structural dynamics held every three years which attracts engineers, research workers and university lectures and others to present their work on structural dynamics, exchange information and discuss subjects of mutual interest. In addition to the keynote lectures, nearly 200 papers were selected for presentation from 260 originally submitted papers.

The opening ceremony was at the Bethlehem Chapel, one of many churches in the Old Town. Prof. L, Fryba, President of the European Association for Structural Dynamics, gave a talk on Past, Present and Future of Structural Dynamics. No doubt, it was a difficult topic to cover.

As a start of the morning sessions on the following days, keynote lectures were given on different branches of structural dynamics. The nearly 200 papers were divided into thirteen themes. These themes together with the number of papers in each subject were:

Theory of vibration (19)

Stochastic dynamics (18)

Non-linear vibration (9)

Vibration of structural elements (10)

Wave propagation (6)

Material properties and noise (17)

Experimental methods in dynamics (12)

Dynamics of bridges (29)

Railway and highway track dynamics (7)

Dynamics of building (15)

Ground vibration (15)

Wind effects (7)

Seismic effects (24)

For presenting such a large number of papers in three days, four parallel sessions were arranged. Each paper was located twenty minutes including question time. Two volumes of proceedings were issued on registration.

Seven delegates (bold face below) from Britain presented their papers in the conferences. The authors and the titles of the papers are listed as follows:

Petyt, M. and Jones, C. J. C., University of Southampton

Littler, J. D., BRE

The dynamic response of a three tier cantilever grandstand

Papatheodorou, M., Taylor, C. A. and Lieven, N. A., University of Bristol

Optimal sensor locations for dynamic verification

Madabhushi, S. P. G., University of Cambridge

Centrifuge modelling of bridge foundations on liquefiable soils

Eccles, B. J., Owen, J. S., Choo, B. S. and Woodings, M. A., University of Nottingham

Non-linear vibrations of cracked reinforced concrete beams

Canisius, T. D. G. and Ellis, B. R., BRE

Dynamic analysis of the Cardington concrete building during construction

Alexander, N. A., Javed, K. and Noor, F. N.

          Phase difference spectra and asymmetric structures

Ji, T. and Ellis, B. R., UMIST and BRE

If anyone is interested in their work, please contact the authors directly.

I was left with an impression from the conference that there was increasing number of publications on considering stochastic characteristics of input and system identification of civil engineering structures. The former tries to find out certainty from uncertainties. The uncertainties may come from the loads applied, the material properties and dimensions of structural elements. Normally it requires more computational efforts. The latter includes the determination of location and severity of damages, identification of parameters of structures and updating of finite element models. Dynamic experimental methods have already been developed to assess dynamic behaviour of structures, but system identification requires a combined experimental and theoretical investigation, which allows many different identification methods to be suggested. Although there was no particular session for system identification at the conference, over twenty papers on this topic were presented under different subject headings.

This conference received more papers than last three in the series. The location and beauty of Prague might have attracted more delegates. The conference was well organised and the presentations went smoothly. In some occasions, the quality of presentations was limited by the facility available.

The next conference will be held in Munich, Germany, in late August or early September 2002.

Tianjian Ji

UMIST