Prof. Schwanghart at the ISTVS 2003 European Conference
It is with our deepest regret that we announce the passing away of Prof. Helmut Schwanghart on Thursday, July 2nd, 2020, at the age of 83.
He had been having health problems for quite some time, especially in the past 6 months. Complications arose after a stomach surgery.
He had been a long time member of ISTVS, he served as president of our Society from 1999 to 2002, and he will be fondly remembered by our community.
We would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to Prof. Schwanghart's family and friends.
In the words of ISTVS UK National Secretary, Dr. Alex Keen:
I met him at several conferences and he was always very good company. It is always a shock when we lose someone who has given so much to the Society and engineering. He was also a very good musician - I remember him joining in with the band at the Vicksburg conference banquet: Professor Schwanghart played the violin and had a a lot of skill at improvising.
and ISTVS 2nd Vice President, Dr. Lutz Richter:
We of course also will not forget his skills at the piano and his humor! He'll be sorely missed.
Dr. J.Y. Wong shared this short note:
I was deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Professor Dr.-Ing. Helmut Schwanghart. I first met him more than five decades ago, during a visit to the then Professor Walter Sӧhne’s Laboratory at TU Mϋnchen, as a member of Dr. Alan Reece’s research group at Newcastle. Since then we had kept in touch. In addition to seeing him at ISTVS conferences and meetings, I met him on many other occasions. I visited him in Munich a couple of times in 1990s, when I was at Oberpfaffenhofen (near Munich) to present professional development programs on vehicle mobility organized by Professor Dr. Willi Kortϋm of DLR. In the summer of 2001, I met both Professor Sӧhne and Professor Schwanghart again at an event hosted by Dr. Reece at Newcastle. It was always a pleasure of meeting him and of exchanging views with him on various topics.
We worked closely when both of us were executives of ISTVS in early 2000s. His devotion to the ISTVS left a striking impression upon me. He was a pioneer in the study of steering behaviour of tires on deformable terrain. His work on “Lateral forces on steered tyres in loose soil”, first published in German and later translated into English and published in the Journal of Terramechanics, Vol. 5, No. 1, is a classic treatise on the subject. He was also an expert in agricultural tractor safety and the author of a book of 440 pages on this topic published in 1979.
His pioneering contributions to terramechanics and his outstanding services to the ISTVS will be long remembered by me and by many.
Prof. Schwanghart, right, enjoying a test drive at the ISTVS 2003 European Conference accompanied by Brig. Gen. Dipl.-Ing. Günter Hohl.
Picture of Prof. Schwanghart taken at Ironbridge, United Kingdom in 2003. Engineering relevance: the cast iron arch bridge in the background opened in 1781 and was the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron.