History of ACME

The Association was formed in March 1992 to both promote research in computational mechanics within the UK, and to establish formal links with similar organisations in Europe and worldwide. The Association is affiliated to the European organisation ECCOMAS and the international organisation IACM.

The principal activity of ACME involves the organisation of an annual two day conference on computational mechanics, developments and research trends. The purpose of this Conference is to provide a forum for reviewing the computational mechanics activities in any area of mechanics - solid, fluid, gas, bio, geo, etc with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary aspects to enable cross-fertilization to take place between different disciplines.

Below is a photograph from the first ACME conference in Swansea in March 1993:

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Theres have been a number of successful conferences every year since 1993.

Professor Olgierd C Zienkiewicz is the association's honorary president and was instrumental in setting up the association in 1992.

Professor Mike Crisfield held the FEA chair in computational mechanics in the Aeronautics Department at Imperial College, London. Mike was a leading researcher in computational mechanics and a keen supporter of ACME (Chairman 1997/8). He died in February 2002. The Mike Crisfield Prize for the best presenter amongst all Post-graduate Research Students and Post-doctoral Researchers at the annual ACME conference was set up in honour of his memory.

The chair of the association rotates annually.