Lecture: Solution of the multi-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation by means of Finite Element Method is going to be given by  Ing. Jiří Náprstek, DrSc. (ÚTAM AV ČR) in Prague, December 12, 2018

The lecture Wind flow around a wind turbine system: wind tunnel tests is going to be given by

María Jiménez Portaz,

PhD. student of Universidad de Granada

The next regular seminar of ITAM is going to be held on  Wednesday 26th of September at 10 AM in Prague. Programme:

10.00: dr. Leopoldo Ruíz-Huerta (head of the National laboratory of additive and digital manufacturing in Mexico)  Design for Additive Manufacturing.

10.50: Matea Ban (Technical University Wien)  Preservation of Architecture: Results from the European Nano-Cathedral Project.

The Jubilee 50th International Chemistry Olympiad, IChO took place in Prague and Bratislava from the 19th to the 29th of July, 2018. More than 300 talented students from 76 countries participated. As part of a daylong excursion they visited the open-air museum at Solvay’s Quarry where Dr. Válek and his team gave a presentation on the history and evolution of lime production. The young chemists learned about limestone, the raw material used in the production of quicklime, about its extraction and processing, the history of the industry, and the development of various types of inorganic binding agents. Contemporary research was covered as well, including the project our team from UTAM is currently working on. As part of the lectures there were practical demonstrations on lime slaking, stirring and application. The young Olympians were captivated by the experiments, and often eagerly asked numerous questions. The presentations for each group usually ended in lively discussions. For most of these young chemists this was the first time encountering a practical demonstration in the processing of quicklime. And thus the lectures and the program gave them insight into a craft that utilizes chemical processes they normally only study on a theoretical level.

The former director of ITAM CAS, prof. Ing. Miroš Pirner, DrSc., dr. h. c., is celebrating his 90th birthday. He served as director from 1990 to 1998. He lead the institute through the difficult period after 1989 when ITAM returned the Emmaus Monastery (where it had been located until then) to the Saint Benedict Order, and had to move to a new location. Currently prof. Pirner serves as senior researcher in the department of Dynamics and Stochastic Mechanics.

ITAM joined a European initiative Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) through an Interreg AT-CZ 133 project with its main investigator Dan Kytýř. The initiative's goal is to offer to young Europeans (18-30) an opportunity to work as a volunteer in a cross-border, multinational and international programmes and related projects. The initiative is a part of the wider concept of European Solidarity Corps.

On November 8-10, 2018, an international scientific conference "Historic ruins - protection, use, management" will be held in Cracow. The conference is co-funded by the Interreg Central Europe Programme within project CE902 RUINS.

First Newsletter of the Interreg Central Europe project ProteCHt2save (Risk Assessment and Sustainable Protection of Cultural Heritage in Changing Environment), of which ITAM CAS is one of the partners, was published.

A seminary Developing a Neutral Equilibrium Device as Dynamic Virtual Piers for an Emergency Relief Bridge on Friday, May 4, 2018.

In the second half of 1990s, an increased attention was paid to the safeguarding of the built heritage and its integration into the life of contemporary society. The complexity of problems of cultural heritage called for modern interdisciplinary approach and this was started in a systematic way in 1995 by founding of a new department of the Institute - the Associated Research Centre for Historic Structures and Sites (ARCHISS) - joining together researchers from two institutes of the Academy of Sciences. The process continued, because of success in grant project competitions and now there are scientists involved in the research from other institutes and universities and two operating research units - one in Prague and one in another World Heritage City of Telč.

Patrimonia is a research program for young people, which enables them to participate in a process of preservation of cultural heritage, to try in practise a scientific research in cooperation with experts and to find out interesting facts and links in their neighbourhoods. Another aim of the project is to document and safeguard our minor cultural heritage - i.e. vanishing family heritage (letters, diaries), oral testimonies, old routes etc. Patrimonia puts to use the potential of school and other groups of young people using the modern information technologies in the course of the collection of the data, thus potentially creating a basis for a digital atlas of cultural heritage.

MONDIS (MONument Damage Information System) is a research project run by the Department of Cybernetics in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the Czech Academy of Sciences. The main project objectives include the integration of existing knowledge and expertise from the field of cultural heritage protection, including the enhancement of cooperation and exchange of experience. The MONDIS project aims to support professionals addressing the structural and technical conditions of heritage buildings and working on designing appropriate measures or structural interventions. This is done using a knowledge base intended for documentation and analysis of the defects and damages in heritage buildings.

Designed as a closed circuit with controlled wind velocity and temperature conditions. It consists of climatic and aerodynamic parts. While the aerodynamic part provides well-fitted conditions to study wind effects on scaled model of prototypes, an equipment of the climatic part is suited for investigation of influences of weather including the wind, temperature, rain and heat radiation. Using the cooling/heating exchanger, cycle temperature changing of the airflow is available in the whole tunnel within the range of -10 to 30 C in relatively short time period. Integral part of the tunnel equipment consists of instruments for airflow diagnostic, data acquisition system, direct pressure surface measurement, precise thermometry and of many other types of handy accessories for instant use. Workshops for manufacturing of testing models are available in the same building.

The website deals with historical production of burnt lime and related lime technologies, traditional craftsmanship of prossesing and utilization of lime in construction. The main objective is a thourough and complex knowledge of the above, a material-based research and a reconstruction of historical procedures. A common goal is to bring attention to the unique historical techniques, which used to be succesfully employed in the past, nowadays, however, are for the main part forgotten. The website is concieved as an open one, striving to gradually add new related information researched by a wide range of experts on archeology, construction materials, history of construction etc.