Summary of the 2017 annual meeting
General summary of the 2017 annual meeting of the ICG-EAC, N.P.O.The 2017 meeting of the ICG-EAC was held from May 7 to 12 in the Carden Park Hotel, located in wonderful surroundings, outside Chester, UK. It was attended by 145 technical delegates (from 17 countries), representing 67 member organizations. In addition to one plenary talk, a total of 79 technical presentations are included in the 2017 meeting minutes (47 oral presentations, 9 special session talks, 8 tutorial lectures, 13 summary/poster presentations and 2 presentation files for the minutes only). For the third time, also this year the meeting was preceded by an excellent tutorial on “Microstructural characterization” on the Sunday.
The technical sessions started with a summary/poster presentation session followed by nine papers on EAC issues in weldments (plus four summary/poster presentations). The papers included studies on both austenitic stainless and nickel-base weld metals. The sessions on stainless steels consisted of ten talks spread over Monday and Tuesday (plus three summary/poster presentations). The low-alloy steel session contained only one presentation dealing with the influence of the environment on the fracture behavior. It may be noted that several papers presented in other sessions were also dealing with low-alloy steels. The sessions on irradiation effects dealt primarily with IASCC of stainless steels. It consisted of nine talks, including also two interesting field cases. On Wednesday the special session was about secondary side issues in PWR, VVER and CANDU systems and consisted of nine very valuable talks. The nickel-base alloy session on Thursday started with a presentation of the status and preliminary results of the ongoing Round-Robin on SCC initiation in Alloy 600. In the three sessions dealing with non-welded Ni-base alloys, there were 12 papers (plus three summary/poster presentations and two submissions for the minutes only) most of which dealt with the behavior of Alloys 690 or 600. The technical part of the meeting ended with five more general type of papers (plus three summary/poster presentations) covering a wide range of topics from regulator to modelling matters.
Sincere thanks are expressed to the local host (headed by John Stairmand, Amec Foster Wheeler, nowadays: Jacobs) as well as to the numerous sponsors for making the meeting such an amazing event! The meeting concluded with an optional technical tour visiting Amec Foster Wheeler and The University of Manchester.
Links to general summaries of other meetings: