About IACMAG

The International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics (IACMAG) was incorporated as a non-profit organization in the State of Arizona, USA, in 1987/1988 with the Secretariat at the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

The history of IACMAG started in 1972 with the first conference on Applications of the Finite Element Method in Geotechnical Engineering held in Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA. The International Committee for Numerical Methods in Geomechanics was established in July 1976 after the Second International Conference on Numerical Methods in Geomechanics, in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. Subsequently, in view of vigorous international activities and interest, IACMAG was founded at the time of the sixth conference, in Innsbruck, Austria, 1988. In 1991 at the conference sponsored by IACMAG in Cairns it was decided to rename it as the International Conference on Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics. Hence, the term “IACMAG Conference” was used from eighth conference in Morgantown, USA.

A Board of Directors for IACMAG was formed and Dr. Chandra S. Desai assumed the responsibility as the President. Late John Booker assumed the position of Vice President of IACMAG. Subsequently, Drs. W.D. Finn, G. Gioda, S. Sakurai, and G. Swoboda have assumed the task of Vice Presidents, and Dr. T. Kundu as Secretary.
IACMAG organises its conferences about every three years. A very high technical content and quality are the main attributes of these conferences. Further, IACMAG also acts as the cosponsor of the International Journal of Geomechanics (IJOG) published by The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)-Geo-institute.
More details on IACMAG are in its web site www.iacmag.org.

IACMAG Conferences

The first conference in this series was held at Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg (USA) in 1972, and the subsequent ones were held in USA (VPI & SU), Blacksburg (USA) 1976, Aachen (Germany) 1979, Edmonton (Canada) 1982, Nagoya (Japan) 1985, Innsbruck (Austria) 1988, Cairns (Australia) 1991, Morgantown (USA) 1994, Wuhan (China) 1997, Tucson (USA) 2001, Torino (Italy) 2005 and the 12th International Conference on Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics was held in Goa (India) in 2008. Details of these conferences are available at www.iacmag.org/index1.html.

The 13th IACMAG Conference to be held in Melbourne, Australia during May, 2011 will address recent developments and relevant issues in computer methods, constitutive models and applications to different areas of Geomechanics, emerging and important topics, and future needs, documented case studies with integration of theory, laboratory and field tests, and validation procedures. This will be consistent with the continuing theme of IACMAG conferences and the International Journal of Geomechanics, namely Fundamentals through Applications.

The special theme for the 13th International Conference has been chosen as Geomechanics in the Emerging Social, Environmental & Technological Age. The conference will endeavour to stress on problems raised by the present day society due to rapid industrialization and globalization, in addition to the objectives covered by the previous conferences. The conference aims to focus on some very recent and emerging trends in Geomechanics such as mechanics of unsaturated soils, micromechanics, nanomechanics, bio-geo interface, infrastructure Geomechanics and Geomechanics for ancient monuments.