Aluminum has been designated by the EU as a strategic and critical raw material because it sits at the core of, advanced manufacturing, defence, automotive, packaging, building, aerospace, defence, electrification and renewable energy technologies. From powering solar panels to enabling electricity grids, aluminum is indispensable to achieving the societal climate and resilience goals. Recycling aluminium uses just 5% of the energy required for primary production, effectively turning scrap into an energy “bank” and a valuable asset. There are, however, important barriers that delay complete circularity. Some of the major barriers include:

• inefficient and fragmented scrap sorting that leads to the accumulation of tramp elements (Fe, Cu, Zn, V, Ni, Pb, Na, Ca etc.) degrading material properties limiting use in high-performance, safety-critical products
• lack of impurity-tolerant alloy chemistries restricting the use of scrap-rich feedstock in high-performance products
• limited digital integration, with alloy design, process modelling, and sustainability assessments performed in isolation.

As a result, much of the recovered material is downcycled into low value cast products, constraining its potential to displace primary Al in demanding applications.

The session aims to stimulate discussion on the above issues and aims to attract high quality scientific presentations in areas such as:

• Advanced scrap characterization to improve sorting accuracy at industrial speeds.
• New and efficient sorting approaches, including robotic and AI-enabled scrap sorting
• Innovative melt refinement technologies to produce high quality secondary aluminum
• Advanced digital simulation and alloy design approaches for the development of impurity-tolerant and impurity-for-advantage alloy chemistries.
• Advanced characterization approaches to quantify the effect of impurities including chemical, microstructural and property characterization.
• 3D printing with recycled feedstock
• Building trust in recycled aluminum alloys: Digitalization for tracking CO2 and energy savings across the value chain
   

During service life composite materials may exhibit highly dynamic loading events, such as foreign object impact or crash situations. Under these conditions, damage may initiate and propagate under dynamic conditions. This session collects the latest advancements in understanding and describing dynamic fracture of composite materials. Contributions in the following domains are therefore sought:

• Experimental methods for measuring high-rate material properties of composites
• Modeling approaches for describing fracture in composites under high-rate loading conditions
• Testing and modeling of strectures under crash and impact loads (e.g. hail strike, bird strike, …)

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) has evolved from a rapid prototyping tool into a manufacturing technology capable of producing complex high-performance components for aerospace, energy, biomedical and structural applications. Despite significant progress, widespread industrial adoption remains limited by challenges related to process stability, microstructure control, defect formation, mechanical performance and qualification. At the same time, metal AM is emerging as a transformative manufacturing route, that enables unique microstructures and combinations of properties that are difficult or even impossible to achieve through conventional processing. This symposium emphasizes materials-centric research aimed at understanding and controlling microstructure, defects and mechanical performance in metal AM. It will highlight advances in process–structure–property relationships that support robust, repeatable and high-performance AM components, addressing both fundamental mechanisms and emerging processing concepts. The symposium covers, but is not limited to, contributions addressing the following topics:

•  Metal AM processes and underlying process physics including laser and electron beam powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition and hybrid manufacturing routes.
• Process–microstructure relationships governing melt pool behavior, solidification, phase transformations, beam shaping and residual stresses.
• Alloy and microstructure design strategies for AM including multimaterials and functionally graded materials.
• Defect formation and degradation mechanisms and their impact on mechanical and functional performance.
• Mechanical behavior of AM metals including fatigue, fracture and creep.
• Post-processing, in situ monitoring and data-driven approaches for process control, qualification and certification.
   

As Confucius noted, failing to correct a mistake is a second error in itself. Failure analysis provides the essential bridge between damage and prevention by tracing progression to identify root causes. By examining physical evidence, engineers can make informed decisions to avert future failure.

Typical techniques such as metallography or fractography reveal microstructure-failure correlations or reflect the actual fracture pattern and existing damage conditions. Beyond these classical methods, further techniques have emerged in recent years, becoming increasingly common and providing valuable new information or making the failure analysis process more effective.

The topics of this session are:

• damage cases from various material categories and applications
• quantitative fractography in Failure Analysis
• microstructure-failure correlations
• introduction of automated procedures and AI support

This session welcomes a broad spectrum of studies addressing industrial challenges in aviation, particularly those driven by the urgent need for optimization or automation as well as broader sustainability goals. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Innovations in Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO)
• Emerging inspection and repair methodologies
• Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)
• Engineering failure analysis and characterization
• Reliability analysis
• Condition-based and predictive maintenance (CBM/PdM)
• MRO decision-support systems

The development, analysis, and optimization of both advanced and additively manufactured materials and components require a deep understanding of their mechanical behavior, especially as influenced by microstructural features. Advanced manufacturing techniques, including additive manufacturing (AM), introduce unique challenges—such as high thermal gradients and process-specific defects—that may significantly affect material performance. This symposium will explore the intricate interplay between microstructure, defects, and mechanical properties across a range of materials including metals, polymers, ceramics, and composites. Emphasis is placed on understanding failure mechanisms under combined physics loadings, where mechanical stresses interact with thermal, environmental, or other physical forces to influence fracture behavior.

Composite materials play a central role in modern engineering systems due to their high performance and design flexibility. At the same time, their structural reliability, long-term durability and end-of-life management represent major challenges in the context of engineering against failure and sustainable development.

Failure behaviour in composite materials is governed by complex, multiscale damage mechanisms, strongly influenced by material architecture, environmental exposure, loading history and ageing processes. In parallel, increasing attention is being devoted to recycling and end-of-life strategies for composite materials, as recycling and reprocessing operations may significantly modify material integrity, damage evolution and residual mechanical performance, with direct implications for reliability, reuse and second-life applications.

Within this framework, particular attention will be given to sustainable composite systems, including bio-based, natural fibre reinforced and hybrid composites, in order to highlight similarities and differences in damage mechanisms, durability and failure behaviour.

This session aims to provide a focused forum on failure mechanisms, damage evolution, durability and recycling of composite materials, with emphasis on engineering methodologies for failure prevention, lifecycle performance assessment and reliable design. Contributions addressing experimental characterization, modelling approaches and application-oriented studies are encouraged, in line with the core themes of ICEAF on engineering against failure.

A short description of this session will be provided soon.

As the demand for materials that can survive extreme environments reaches an all-time high, High Entropy Alloys (HEAs) have emerged as a transformative solution of future exploration. Departing from the traditional "one-base-element" metallurgy concept, HEAs leverage vast compositional spaces and unique lattice distortions to achieve properties once thought mutually exclusive.

This session aims to bridge the gap between fundamental alloy design and industrial scalability. We invite researchers to present breakthroughs in High Entropy Alloy (HEAs) and/or Multi-Principal Element Alloys (MPEAs), focusing on how these complex systems challenge our current understanding of the topic.

Key points of interest can include (among others) the following topics:

• Processing Challenges and Additive Manufacturing (AM) Integration
• AI and High-Throughput Discovery Methods (ML, CALPHAD etc.)
• Microstructural Evolution and Stability Trends
• The "Cocktail Effect" in Extremes
• Mechanical Property Synergies
• Surface Degradation Phenomena and Environmental Resilience

Advanced materials have an increasing role in engineering, in various industrial applications. These materials operate in severe environments, withstand complex multi-axial loading conditions. Fracture of advanced materials is a major problem that may occur inside the structure and at the interfaces between the different materials. This symposium will accept papers that can highlight the following areas:

Fracture mechanics problems of structures from advanced materials, failure of composite structures under combined loading conditions. Comparison of computational and/or analytical and experimental methods in composite structures under different loading conditions. Interface problems in structures from advanced materials.