Symposia

The first international FLAC Symposium on Numerical Modeling in Geomechanics was held on September 1-3, 1999. Over 90 participants from 22 different countries came to Minneapolis to attend the conference. The event originated as a celebration of FLAC's 15th birthday and as recognition of the code's popularity. In addition to the three-day symposium, activities available to participants also included a FLAC short course taught by Peter Cundall, a river cruise along the Mississippi, and a banquet held at the Nicollet Island Inn.

The FLAC Symposium was the the first time that a large group of users assembled to describe and discuss the wide variety of problems to which FLAC (and FLAC3D) may be applied. Symposium sessions covered engineering applications and theoretical developments in topic areas that included embankment and slope stability, underground cavity design and mining, dynamic analysis, soil/structure interaction, coupled processes and fluid flow, failure and collapse analysis, nuclear waste isolation, and constitutive models. Development plans for the codes were discussed, including the GIIC (Graphical Interface for Itasca Codes). The topics of the symposium and a brief overview of the history of FLAC are contained in the symposium proceedings, FLAC and Numerical Modeling in Geomechanics, edited by symposium organizers Roger Hart and Christine Detournay.

After the success of the first International FLAC Symposium, held in Minneapolis (USA) in September 1999, it was proposed to hold such a symposium every two years. Thus, the 2nd FLAC Symposium was being held in Lyon (France) from October 29th to October 31st, 2001. This event provided both long-standing and prospective FLAC & FLAC3D users with an opportunity to meet, and to share ideas and experiences; it also celebrated the 20th birthday of Itasca Consulting Group, Inc and the 10th birthday of its subsidiary in France, Itasca Consultants SA.

In 2003, the third International Symposium on FLAC and Numerical Modeling in Geomechanics returned to North America and was held in Sudbury (Ontario, Canada) from October 21 to October 24, 2003, with two days of short courses before the symposium. Technical contributions to the conference were received from a wide range of different disciplines, representing virtually the entire globe.

The Fourth International FLAC Symposium, held May 29-31, 2006, in Madrid, was a success. Attendees had the chance to hear over 50 papers on the use of FLAC and FLAC3D in the areas of: slopes and embankments; underground structures; coupled processes and fluid flow; dynamic analysis; soil-structure interaction; tectonics; numerical techniques; and constitutive models/material behavior. We would like to thank all who attended for a truly memorable experience.

If you did not have the chance to attend the symposium, you can still find out what you missed by getting the Symposium Proceedings and/or the Symposium Presentations. The Proceedings CD is available for purchase from Itasca Consulting Group. The Presentations CD is available free on request (shipping charge is applied).

Itasca hosted the first-ever FLAC/DEM Conference from August 25-27, 2008 in Minneapolis. The conference featured topics and discussions covering the spectrum of Itasca software: FLAC, FLAC3D, UDEC, 3DEC, PFC2D, and PFC3D. Where past Itasca-sponsored conferences limited their scope to a single 2D/3D code pair, this conference, in considering all the codes, offered a complete look at the state of numerical modeling with Itasca software.

More information, including a list of papers, presentation downloads, and details about the proceedings, can be found on the 2008 FLAC/DEM Symposium page.

Itasca hosted the 2nd International FLAC/DEM Symposium on 14-16 February 2011 in Melbourne, Australia. The conference featured topics and discussions covering the spectrum of Itasca software: FLAC, FLAC/Slope, FLAC3D, UDEC, 3DEC, PFC2D, and PFC3D. This conference, in considering all the codes, offered a complete look at the state of numerical modeling with Itasca software.

More information, including a list of papers, presentation downloads, and details about the proceedings, can be found on the 2011 FLAC/DEM Symposium page.