For his contribution „Mesh Tying and Contact Algorithms for Nonlinear Beam-to-Solid Interactions“, Ivo Steinbrecher, PhD candidate at the Institute for Mathematics and Computer-Based Simulation, was awarded the „GACM Best-Poster-Award“ at the „8th GACM Colloquium on Computational Mechanics“ in Kassel, Germany.

On Tuesday, June 25, this year's IMCS excursion took us at temperatures up to 35 degrees to the beautiful city of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The most important item on our agenda was a visit to the "Chocolaterie Amelie" in the historic Ludwigstraße, where we learned everything we could possibly know about chocolate.

The institute contributed to the European Trilinos User Group Meeting 2019, held at ETH Zurich on June 11, 2019. Dr. Matthias Mayr gave a talk on "Using Trilinos/MueLu for Scalable Multigrid Preconditioning" aiming at introducing new users to MueLu, but also at highlighting current MueLu capabilities and development activities.

The Institute actively participated in the VIII International Conference on Computational Methods for Coupled Problems in Science and Engineering on June 3-5, 2019. Dr. Matthias Mayr was appointed to the Scientific Committee of the conference. In collaboration with Prof. Guglielmo Scovazzi (Duke University) and Prof. Michael W. Gee (Technical University of Munich), he has organized an invited minisymposium entitled "Coupled Multiphysics Problems: Discretization Approaches and Solution Methods".

On Friday, 17 May 2019, the Institute was a guest at the ANSYS User Club e.V. Workshop 2019 in Blumenthal Castle near Augsburg. At the invitation of the association's board, Prof. Alexander Popp introduced this year's main workshop topic "Contact Simulation" with a keynote lecture entitled "From Fundamental Research to Application: Selected Trends in Computer-Based Simulation of Contact Problems".

On Monday, 25 March 2019, the last step of the commissioning of the brand-new DELTA Intel Xeon Cluster of our institute took place. The cooling unit and the associated water cooling circuit were connected to the already installed high-performance computer and now control the fully automatic cooling of our powerful hardware components...

On Thursday and Friday, March 22 and 23, 2019, the Young Investigator Committee (EYIC) of the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS) with Prof. Popp as chairman met at our university. ECCOMAS is the leading European scientific association in the field of computer-based simulation...

The journal Stahlbau publishes an annual Christmas prize problem which readers can use to grit their teeth. The contents of these tasks deal with a wide variety of topics in mechanics and mathematics. In recent years, for example, rolling ellipses, buckling water-filled pipes or the optimal stacking of blocks had to be investigated. The 2018 Christmas Prize task was about a sinusoidal frame loaded with rainwater - this is not necessarily an outstanding construction in terms of civil engineering, but it is mechanically all the more appealing. Ivo Steinbrecher, PhD candidate at IMCS, was able to find the correct solution - we congratulate.

On Tuesday, 22 January 2019, the results of the first two bachelor theses submitted since the institute was renamed IMCS were presented at an institute seminar. The two Civil Engineering students Viet Anh Dao and Christoph Ritzert have written two excellent bachelor theses under the supervision of the research assistants in Prof. Popp's research group...

On Tuesday, December 4, 2018, the Christmas party of our institute took place in the "Kaminzimmer" of the Uni-Casino Neubiberg. With homemade cookies and a Christmas menu, all our colleagues reviewed an exciting and very successful year...

The purchase and commissioning of the institute's brand new DELTA Intel Xeon Cluster for high-performance computing is progressing in big steps - and we are all very excited about that! On Thursday, November 29, the rack itself and the water-cooling unit have been delivered...

Our recent research article "Biorthogonal splines for optimal weak patch coupling in isogeometric analysis with applications to finite deformation elasticity" has been accepted for publication in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering...

IMCS researchers visited the Multi-scale Analysis of Materials Group (MUSAM) directed by Prof. Paggi (IMT Lucca) for our collaborative research on multi-scale modelling of contact phenomena. After MUSAM researchers have visited IMCS in September 2018 to initiate the collaboration, Nora Hagmeyer and Matthias Mayr now travelled to IMT Lucca to discuss progress and achievements.

At this year's "Day of the Munich School of Engineering (MSE)" at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Garching on Friday, July 6, Prof. Alexander Popp was awarded the "Top Teaching Trophy (t3)" by the students of the MSE student body for the best lecture in the B.Sc. program Engineering Science in the academic year 2017/18.

At this year's Open Day of the University of the German Armed Forces Munich on Saturday, June 30, our institute was represented in the main building with an extensive range of exhibits on the topic of "Hands-on Mathematics". Our stand quickly developed into a real visitor magnet, where young and old alike ...

On June 11, 2018, Prof. Alexander Popp was awarded the O.C. Zienkiewicz Award of the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS) at the opening ceremony of the ECCM-ECFD Conference 2018 in Glasgow (Scotland).

The whole IMCS team congratulates Sergejs Rogovs on his successful PhD graduation! The oral examination for his dissertation entitled "Pointwise Error Estimates for Boundary Control Problems on Polygonal Domains" took place on Monday, 25 June under the chairmanship of Prof. Klaus Bogenberger. The examiners were Prof. Thomas Apel, Prof. Olaf Steinbach (TU Graz) and Prof. Dmitriy Leykekhman (University of Connecticut).

As part of the book series "CISM-Springer" of the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM) in cooperation with Springer-Verlag, the new volume "Contact Modeling for Solids and Particles" has been published under the editorship of Prof. Alexander Popp and Prof. Peter Wriggers (Hannover).

This year's IMCS excursion took us to Sea Life Munich on Wednesday, June 20 in beautiful summer weather. After learning everything about turtles, sharks, rays and seahorses during a guided tour through the aquarium, we had a Bavarian snack ready in the saving shade of the beer garden at the "Bamberger Haus".

Prof. Apel is one of the keynote speakers at the 8th International Conference Computational Methods in Applied Mathematics: CMAM-8.

The ECCOMAS Advanced Course on Computational Structural Dynamics will take place from 4th to 8th June 2018 in Prague (Czech Republic) and gives participants an overview of the basics of modern modelling and simulation methods...

In the spring term 2018 Prof. Popp will offer the new lecture "Nonlinear FEM" in the master courses BAU and ME for the first time. The lecture provides students with an in-depth overview of nonlinear problems and their numerical solutions...

Thomas Apel, Ulrich Langer, Arnd Meyer and Olaf Steinbach edit the collection "Advanced Finite Element Methods with Applications - Proceedings of the 30th Chemnitz FEM Symposium 2017" which will be published by Springer.

Prof. Apel will hold a compact course entitled "Advanced finite element error estimates" in Graz from 23 to 27 April 2018.

At the beginning of the new year 2018 there will be some major changes at the institute. Prof. Alexander Popp (previously Technische Universität München) takes over the newly founded professorship for computer-based simulation in civil engineering...