Future planning of conferences
Since its foundation, IFHTSE has been active in encouraging collaborative planning of international conferences in heat treatment and surface engineering. This applies mainly and especially to those events which primarily or exclusively use the English language, but for timing and to help to avoid significant programme clashes, we also take into account the often annual events held using Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, French, etc. and we take note of the forward plans for the long-standing German-language event HK (which now also uses English as an additional language).
The IFHTSE Bulletin, which appears every few weeks, lists the main conferences of which we have enough advance knowledge.
There are practical limits to just how ‘rational’ the forthcoming programme can be:
heat treatment and surface engineering is a very important subject and a broad one, and conference activity is one of the better and more practical ways to ensure knowledge transfer and personal communication and networking. Therefore the calendar can be crowded
there are many conferences which are of importance and significance for heat treatment and surface engineering people (such as the Wear series and the various tribology conferences, especially the World Tribology Congress)
the majority of heat treatment and surface engineering events are held in the Northern Hemisphere and especially in spring and autumn – though this does leave good room for date planning in the Southern Hemisphere winter.
The main items (there are other series) for coordination are
IFHTSE Congress (various countries – almost annual)
ASM HTS (USA – every two years)
HK (Germany; historically in Wiesbaden but in Cologne for 2014 – annual)
European Conference on Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering (rotates around a small number of European countries – annual)
Mediterranean Conference on Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering
International Conference on Thermal Process Modelling and Simulation in Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering (ICTPMS)
Asian Conference on Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering.
IFHTSE also coordinates planning with:
the annual Surface Modification Technology series
tools and tooling conferences.
The immediate future programme has the general pattern shown above (some still subject to confirmation).
Next events in the Asian Conference on Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering series are open for discussion.
IFHTSE leadership changes
31 December sees the end of the period of office as President of Professor Xu Kewei who has served for 2012–2013.
Taking over as President for 2014–2015 is Prof Reinhold Schneider with as Vice President Dr Patrick Jacquot. More details in the first issue of this journal for 2014.
IFHTSE President 2012–2013 Xu Kewei opens the 1st International Conference on Energy Management in Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering, June 2012, Bangkok
