Jtam-A4.dvi


FROM THE EDITORS

This special issue of JTAM (Vol. 56/2018, No. 2) is entirely devoted to the Polish Society of
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (PSTAM), the Publisher of JTAM, on the occasion of its
60th anniversary.
PSTAMwas established in 1958 as an initiative of eminent Polishmechanicians at that time

– Witold Nowacki, Wacław Olszak, Jerzy Mutermilch, Sylwester Kaliski, Witold Wierzbicki
and many other scientists having outstanding achievements and international recognition. The
initiators referred to a long tradition of Polish Mechanics going back to the time of Adam
AdamandyKochanski (1631-1700) and then intensively developed in the 19th and20th centuries
by world-known scientists like Jan Nepomucen Franke (1846-1918), Feliks Jasiński (1856-1899),
Marian Smoluchowski (1872-1917) and Maksymilian Tytus Huber (1872-1950). PSTAM was a
new scientific organization in Poland that entered into relation with the International Union
of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) formed in 1949. Today PSTAM incorporates
more than 1000 members and considerably contributes to the development of Mechanics and
international scientific collaboration.
Exceptionally, this special issue includes invited papers only. Our invitations went to the

scientists whom we know for their excellent research, conference activities and top-level earlier
publications. It is an international group of authors. Part of them are members of the Editorial
Board of JTAMwho usually do not publish in our Journal.Wewould like to emphasize that all
the invited papers have been reviewed within the standard editorial procedure of JTAM.
This special issue contains 16 articles reflecting research activities of the invited authors and

their research teams. The papers comprise the following thematic areas:

• Thermo-elastic phenomena in continua,

• Instability and bifurcations in machinery,

• Mechanical properties of materials and structures,

• Numerical methods in mechanics,

• Solid-fluid interactions,

• Dynamic contact problems,

• Modelling and simulation of structures.

The topics being presented indicate problems in Mechanics that attract attention of scientists
and are important for technological innovations and their applications in modern industry.
Wewould like to thank all the authors of the articles in this issue for accepting our invitation

and contributing to the publishing output of JTAM.
The Publisher is grateful to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland for

financial support aiming at increase of the scientific quality, impact and international reputation
of our Journal.

Włodzimierz Kurnik ZbigniewKowalewski
Editor-in-Chief of JTAM Chairman of PSTAM