Preface.
Kulu, Priit
The first International Baltic Conference on Powder Metallurgy was
held in 1991. Conferences on materials engineering have become a
tradition since then. The 20th Baltic Conference in Materials
Engineering took place in 2011 in Kaunas. Those three-annual conferences
in the three Baltic countries deal with specific topics in each country:
engineering materials in Lithuania, powder technology and composite
materials in Latvia, and powder materials, coatings and tribology in
Estonia.
The conferences have attracted numerous participants from academic
institutions, e.g. Kaunas University of Technology, Riga Technical
University and Tallinn University of Technology, as well as from
industry.
BALTMATTRIB conferences in Estonia have become an open forum for
researchers and engineers for presenting and sharing new ideas, and
encouraging development and cooperation in basic, as well as applied
research in the fields of materials science, powder metallurgy, surface
engineering and tribology.
BALTMATTRIB has always enhanced cooperation between researchers and
engineers by bringing them together and discussing the latest research
results. Participants from 16 countries are present at BALTMATTRIB 2012,
to be held on October 18-19, 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia. More than 80
papers were submitted to be presented at the conference. After carefully
studying the papers, 55 papers from 15 countries were accepted for oral
presentation. Selected papers are published in special issues of the
journals Key Engineering Materials and Estonian Journal of Engineering.
The Organizing Committee of the conference would like to express
their gratitude to authors and referees for their quick feedback that
has helped us to compile the conference proceedings and the current
issue. We would especially like to thank the Estonian Ministry of
Education (targeted financial projects SF 01400062S08 and SF
01400091S08), the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Tallinn
University of Technology (base-financed project), the Doctoral School
"Functional Materials and Technologies" of UT and TUT
(Archimedes Foundation project 1.2.0401.09-0079), and the City of
Tallinn.
doi: 10.3176/eng.2012.3.01
On behalf of the Organizing Committee of BALTMATTRIB 2012
Prof. Priit Kulu
Conference Chair
