Conferences

Already 16th annual conference „Service Life of Power Equipment Components“ successfully took place from 19 to 21 of October in the beautiful environment of Srní at Šumava. We are very pleased that we could have met in person and in big numbers compared to last year.

Program of the conference, traditionally focused on the issue of the servis life of power components working in the demanding environment of energy equipment, focused on individual methods of software support for safe operation of energy equipment in individual thematic sessions, practical topic usable in the operation of conventional thermal power plants, diagnostics, degradation of mechanical properties of contruction materials, materials engineering and service services in energy sector.

Content of all 38 presented professional papers followed, as always, the most current topics. Compared to previous years, this time a larger number of contributions was devoted to the issue of nuclear energy. Modern trends in the energy sector will, as we believe, dominate also in the future years of this successful conference.

We would like to thank all the speakers and participants of the conference for their inspiring contributions, stimulating discussion and friendly atmosphere that accompanied the conference througouth its duration. Many thanks also go to the partners, sponsors and organizers for preparation and ensuring smooth running of the conference.

Due to the disciplined behavior of all involved, the concerns about the risk of the spread of Covid-19 have not materialized, and we therefore firmly believe that we will be able to meet in person under the same or even better circumstances next year.

We look forward to seeing you on 18 – 20 October 2022 at the Already 17th annual conference in Srní.

Already 15th conference „The Contribution of Metallography to Solving Production Problems“ took place from 21st to 23rd September in Hotel Krakonoš in Mariánské Lázně, same as the last one. This time, we couldn´t hold up the usual three years period, as its originally planned happenig in June 2020 was made impossible due to restrictions against the spread of Covid-19 and most of the participants refused the online version. The conference was organized by Research and Testing Institute Pilsen together with Department of Materials Engineering of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering CTU in Prague, The Engineering Academy of the Czech Republic and The Czech Society of New Materials and Technologies.

Based on the agreement with Slovak partners, this event took turn in yearly intervals with conferences „Metalloghraphy“ and „Fractography“ which are hold in Slovakia, however these two conferences merged into one in recent past. While „Metallography“ is an international conference focused more on teoretical problems and „Fractography“ was focused on violation of the material and its manifestation on fracture surfaces, the conference „Contribution of Metallography“, how the title sugests, deals with the solutions of practical production and operational problems using metallography (materialography) and fractography.

The central theme was, as in previous years, the application of traditional, as well as modern, techniques and methods of examining the structure of materials in solving the causes of production and operational defects and accidents of machine parts and structures. Main areas were:

• solutions of production and operational problems by methods of materialography and fractography
• new techniques and methods in metallography
• application of metallography in welding

The event hosted 66 workers from institutions delaing with metallography, although today the more fitting term is materialography. During the conference, there were 36 lectures and
6 company presentations presented (LECO Instrumente Pilsen, Olympus Czech Group, Metalco Testing, Hanyko Prague, TSI Systems and ANAMET). Participation was again influenced by the current epidemiological situtation. We couldn´t put traditional
Czech-Slovak into the conference´s title, as no one came from Slovakia to take part in it. But there was lots of young colleagues, which was encouraging. To their participation also contribute the fact that the organizers are trying to keep low registration fee (it didn´t go up much for the last 12 years). Professional program of the conference is possible to evaluate as very good. The presence of participants in the lecture hall also testified to this, as there was nice Indian summer during conference and therfore it was tempting for walks in the city centre and into the surrounding beautiful nature. Selected presentations will be publised in the Key Engineering Materials magazine.

For the organizer Research and Testing Institute Pilsen, Josef Kasl