Book Description

The 5-th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics was held on the campus of the Uni- versity of Colorado, Boulder on August 4-7, 1999. The local organizers, which included Kaspar Willam and Stein Sture as co-%chairs, and Aerospace Engineering Profs. Carlos Felippa, Charbel Farhat and K.C. Park, made a determined effort to involve engineers and scientists not only from academia and government research laboratories, but also from software houses and practicing engineering firms. Of the nearly 700 participant, over 130 were students, and 185 came from abroad. The large number of participants clearly demonstrated that the field of Computational Mechanics is still undergoing expansion, with activities ranging from computational mathematics and numerical solutions of large-scale physical problems, to innovative computer simulations in many engineering disciplines. Over 700 presentations were organized within 40 mini-symposia. One noteworthy symposium was entitled History of the Finite Element Method, which brought together pioneers of the early days of this very important technology.