A few years ago, our society moved towards collaboration with other relevant societies. Among them, a very important one is FISITA (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Ingénieurs des Techniques de l’Automobile, fisita.com). According to their website, “Established in 1950, FISITA is the international network for automotive engineers, with a reach to over 200,000 engineers in 35 countries.” ISTVS became an affiliate member of FISITA in 2021 and a full member in 2022.
Each year, in addition to its own events, FISITA endorses several conferences organized by its members. In 2022, one such event was the EAEC – MVT 2022 (European Automobile Engineers Cooperation – Motor Vehicle and Road Transportation) Conference, entitled The 17th European Automotive Congress and The 32nd SIAR International Congress of Automotive and Transport Engineering. The conference was held in October 25-29 in Timisoara, Romania. SIAR (siar.ro) is the Society of Automotive Engineers of Romania (Sociatatea Inginerilor de Automobile din Romania), which is a FISTA member, and also affiliated with SAE International (Society of Automotive Engineers International, sae.org).
At the initiative of Brigadier General Ret. Prof. Günter Hohl (ISTVS member and FISITA liaison for SIAR), who initiated the conversation, ISTVS held a session on Terrain Vehicles at EAEC – MVT 2022. The session was organized by Prof. Corina Sandu and co-chaired with Prof. Liviu Mihon, Conference Chair and Prof. at the Polytechnic University of Timisoara, Romania. The session, which contained the following papers, was received with a lot of interest by the attendees:
Ahmed Elawad Eltayeb Ahmed, Gyorgy Pillinger, Peter Kiss, The connection of sandy loam soil moisture content to the loadbearing capacity
Ekansh Chaturvedi, Jyotirmoy Mukherjee, Corina Sandu, Multibody Dynamics and Terramechanics-based modeling and simulation of Quarter-Car with Suspension
Varsha S. Swamy, Rashna Pandit, Alba Yerro, Corina Sandu, Bernardo Castellanos, Denise Rizzo, Katherine Sebeck, Behavior of wet clay due to off-road traffic loading
Mohit Nitin Shenvi, Corina Sandu, Comparative study on rolling resistance force in tire-ice interaction with a variation of tread rubber compound
At the same event, Prof. Sandu gave a plenary talk about ISTVS and a keynote lecture on Challenging Terrains Mobility Studies.
Prof. Peter Kiss, Prof. Corina Sandu, and Brigadier General Ret. Prof. Günter Hohl with graduate students in Timisoara, Romania at EAEC – MVT 2022
We will continue our activities at FISITA events in 2023. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Böttinger, from University of Hohenheim, Germany, will give a keynote lecture at the 2023 FISITA World Congress, September 11-15, in Barcelona, Spain. ISTVS will also organize a session at the ESFA 2023 (The 33rd International Congress of SIAR of Automotive and Transportation Engineering and the 10th Fuel Economy, Safety and Reliability of Motor Vehicles Congress) organized by SIAR in Bucharest, Romania, November 1-3, 2023.