Funds are provided for partial travel support for the Principal Investigator and eleven other researchers in the field of fracture mechanics applications to cementitious and aggregative materials to participate in the International Conference on Recent Developments on the Fracture of Concrete and Rock to be held in Cardiff, September 20-22, 1989. This conference, the fifth in an annual series, is supported by RILEM committees, TC- 89 FMT, Fracture Mechanics of Concrete, Test Methods; TC-FMA, Fracture Mechanics of Concrete, Applications; SEM subdivision on Fracture of Concrete and Rock; ACI 446, Fracture Mechanics; and the International Society for Rock Mechanics. This meeting provides an international forum for technical discussions on using fracture mechanics methodologies for describing crack propagation and fracture in concrete and rock subjected to complex states of stress. A particularly important feature of this -- and the previous two conferences -- is to bring together researchers working primarily with concrete and those working primarily with rock, as the testing, evaluation and application problems are quite similar. It is noted that the Europeans and Japanese are making great progress toward implementing these concepts into forensic engineering and design practice. As this area of research has also developed rapidly within the United States, interaction between the various groups on formal and informal levels is very desirable.
