International Congress on Fracture is an international body for promoting worldwide cooperation among scientists and engineers concerned with the mechanics and mechanisms of fracture, fatigue and strength of solids.
History
The idea for an International Congress on Fracture dates to 1961 and a meeting at MIT when an “Interim International Conference Committee” was established under the Chairmanship of Takeo Yokobori. ICF1 was then organised in Sendai, Japan in November 1965 and it was at ICF2 in Brighton, England that ICF was formally founded in April 1969 with statutes and by-laws, a Council and Executive. Thereafter ICF organised a major conference every four years. ICF also organised “interquadrennial” conferences, the first of which was in Beijing, China in November 1983. ICF established national organisations in their member nations, one of the first being the “Australasian Fracture Group” founded in 1971. ICF became more than a conference organiser and rather a society for the broad field of structural integrity, fracture, fatigue, creep, corrosion and reliability – from biological to geophysical materials: metals, alloys, ceramics, composites, electronic and natural materials. The scope evolved through ICF1-1CF12 from nano to macro scales, from basic science, engineering and mathematics to practical technology and systems modelling for safe design. At an ICF Interquadrennial Conference in Anaheim, USA May 2011 ICF was renamed “ICF: The World Academy of Structural Integrity”.
Structure
ICF-WASI is governed by a Council which comprises members from each member nation, with one nationone vote. The Council meets once every four years at each ICF-WASI Quadrennial. Council delegates the management of ICF-WASI to a President and an Executive Committee. Since ICF6 the Treasurer has acted as the de facto CEO working closely with the President and Secretary-General. Council elects Fellows every four years who are now termed “Academicians”. ICF-WASI in its widest sense consists also of the “Associates” who comprise the whole community of the up to 10,000 delegates who have attended Quadrennial and Interquadrennial conferences.
