Newsletter 2/2018

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Dear readers and friends of science,
After a while we again hand you, this time for autumn evening reading under a lamp, another issue of the ITAM and CET Newsletter. Despite the summer holidays, the researchers from our departments have produced interesting results which are described in more detail on the following pages.
From the many results we can be proud of, I would like to mention the development of an effective method describing deformation processes and crack propagation in nonhomogeneous materials. Samples of the material are exposed to mechanical stress and irradiated at the same time. A unique device developed by ITAM employees has brought this method from theory into reality. ITAM research also has practical applications. A relatively complex analyses of a footbridge in Písek was carried out by scientists from the Department for Dynamics and Stochastic Mechanics. The footbridge consists of two different but connected bridges. The structure is therefore rather unusual and is characterised by a strong dynamic response to wind and pedestrian crossing on both parts.
In the text you can find e.g. a report on a prestigious award given to ITAM workers personally by the president of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prof. Eva Zažímalová. It is a great honour, and we hope that this recognition will serve as inspiration to younger workers and proof that it is possible to attain high social prestige in the sciences. This is undoubtedly true of a former ITAM director Prof. Miroš Pirner, who turned 90 in September and is still scientifically active. We congratulate him on behalf of the editorial board of the Newsletter and ITAM workers.
ITAM and CET are present at conferences, abroad or with foreign guests. Before the summer we organised the international conference Engineering Mechanics 2018 in Svratka, and at the end of the summer we established a collaboration with the National Laboratory of Additive Production, digitalization and Tomography in Mexico. ITAM joined the international project Conservation of concrete Cultural Heritage (CONSECH20), and participated on the nineteenth annual Documentation and surveys of historical timber roofs course in Slovakia. In short, the summer and the beginning of autumn was again a very busy time at ITAM and CET.
I should probably stop listing our institute’s activities though, as the editorial should not aspire to reveal everything. I wish you an entertaining read.
S. Pospíšil, director