Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Integrity-Reliability-Failure (IRF2020)

IRF2020 is the seventh international gathering of a prestigious series of Integrity-Reliability-Failure conferences coordinated by the International Scientific Committee of Mechanics and Materials in Design. This series of conferences is wholly devoted to advances in mechanics, materials, structural integrity and design.

IRF2020 is jointly sponsored by the University of Porto, the University of Toronto and the Portuguese Society of Experimental Mechanics. The conference attracted over 250 contributions, with 216 accepted submissions involving 593 authors from 36 different countries  around the world.

The conference themes, which address novel and advanced topics on Integrity, Reliability and Failure, focused on Theory, Experiments and Applications in Engineering, including Computational Mechanics, Experimental Mechanics, Fracture and Fatigue, Composite and Advanced Materials, Tribology and Surface Engineering, Mechanical Design and Prototyping, Biomechanical Applications, Civil Engineering Applications, Energy and Thermo-Fluid Systems, and Industrial Engineering and  Management, among other topics. Unfortunately, due to the serious restrictions imposed by the pandemic COVID-19, which is affecting people all around the world, the oral and poster presentations scheduled for the IRF2020 conference had to be cancelled from its traditional model, as it was planned taking place in Funchal, from 6 to 10 September 2020.
Nevertheless, given the advanced stage of the whole editorial process, we decided to go ahead with the publication of the present volume of the conference Proceedings, which includes all the Extended Abstracts / Full Papers approved by the IRF2020 International Scientific Committee. The document is published online for free access, from where an e-book and a PDF version of the Proceedings can also be downloaded.

We do believe that the publication of this volume offers our authors a forum for discussion and dissemination of their recent work in assessing the integrity, reliability and failure of engineering structures, components and systems. It fostered research that integrates mechanics and materials in the design process, and promoted exchange of ideas and international co-operation among scientists and engineers in this important field of engineering. We are particularly indebted to the authors and special guests for their contributions. Each of the 216 approved papers offers an opportunity for thorough discussions with the authors and the scientific community. Particularly, we acknowledge the  excellent contributions of the participants, their innovative ideas and research directions, the novel modelling and simulation techniques, and the invaluable critical comments that will come out of this kind of “virtual” conference.

We also take this opportunity to thank the members of the International Scientific Committee and the reviewers for their time and helpful  suggestions, the symposia organizers for their efforts and valuable contributions to the success of this publication, and the local organizing committee for an absolutely superb organization of this “virtual” meeting. To all of them, we offer our deepest gratitude.