June 13, 199

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Attendees: Alex Cheng, James Hu, Jim Kirby, Jerry Lennon, Hayley Shen, Francis Ting, Keh-Han Wang

Group Picture 1

Group Picture 2

1. Report of business of Executive Committee:

• Nomination of ASCE awards: Members can submit nominations through the Fluids Committee or directly to the ExCom. Most ASCE awards have deadline in September.
• George Voyiadjis of Inelastic Behavior Committee will organize activities on Computational Materials with the goal of forming a committee in the future. Interested members should contact Voyiadjis.
• Undergraduate student paper award: This it the first year such award will be given. Due to the limited time for announcement, there was only one submission completed at the time of the meeting. (Later during the 13^th Conference, the evaluation committee determined that this paper and the presentation was excellent and the author received the award.) The technical committees are asked to spread the information about the award and to encourage future submissions.
2. Report of business of Programs Committee:

• The 13^th conference has about 300 registrants. This conference is the first one held under the new procedure in which the local sponsor assumes primary authority and responsibility. The Proceedings will be on CDROM. It is not published by ASCE. The organizer does not view this as an official publication and no copyright release was requested from authors.
• The 14^th ASCE Engineering Mechanics Conference has been scheduled in May 21-24, 2000, at Austin, Texas. Technical Committees’ help is requested to organize special sessions.
• The 2001 conference will be a joint ASCE/ASME/SES Mechanics Conference, in La Jolla, California.
3. Report of business of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics Editorial Board:

• The journal publishes about 180 papers a year. The current acceptance rate is about 55%.
• The number of subscribers is about 2,100.
• A special issue on "Recent Developments in the Modeling of Linear and Nonlinear Water Waves, and Turbulent Flows" is co-edited by the Fluids Committee (Teng, Wang, and Shen) and the Turbulence Committee, and will be published as the July 1999 issue. A few other special issues are being organized by other committees.
4. Report of Fluids Committee Activities:

• Six special sessions have been organized for the 13^th Engineering Mechanics Conference. (See the Fluids Committee Annual Report for detail.)
• A special issue of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics on Environmental Fluid Mechanics was edited. (See above.)
• A task committee was formed to edit a book on Environmental Fluid Mechanics to be published by the ASCE Press. (See Annual Report.)
• Since October 1998, the Fluids Committee has received 22 manuscripts for review for the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.
5. Committee New Business:

• A number of members are concerned about the CDROM "publication" of the 13^th Conference. In the past, the 4-page submissions were called "papers", and authors listed them as "Conference Proceeding Papers" in their publication record. Under the new arrangement, the papers are referred to as extended abstracts, and are not "published" from the conference organizers’ point-of-view. It is merely information shared among the presenters. In the future, this may make the conference less attractive to junior researchers who need to show record of publication. The Committee wishes to transmit this concern to the ExCom.
• A proposal to organized another special issues for the Journal of Engineering Mechanics is considered. However, the committee decides to wait a year.
• Members are asked to organize special sessions for the 2000 conference in Austin. The following sessions are under consideration:
• Sediment transport-sheet flow dynamics: Hayley Shen will work with the Granular Flow Subcommittee.
• Groundwater flow: Jerry Lennon (pending a check of possible conflict with activities of the Hydraulics Division)
• Fluid-structure interactions: K.-H. Wang, working with Allen Chwang
• Fluid-sediment interaction around hydraulic structures: Francis Ting
• Particle image velocimetry: Jim Kirby
• Environmental fluid mechanics workshop/panel: Hayley Shen
• Input will be sought from other committee members who are not present at the meeting.
• To have a broader coverage in areas of fluids, the committee members are asked to recruit new members who can play active roles in committee activities.

 Respectfully submitted by: Alex Cheng