Preface

FraMCoS). FraMCoS-II was held in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1995 under the presidency of F.H. Wittmann, while the third conference in the series was held in Gifu, Japan, in 1998. It was organised jointly by the third president, H. Mihashi, and by K. Rokugo. The fourth conference in this series remains true to its original spirit, namely to present, discuss and ex- change fundamental and applied results that pertain to the understanding, modelling and analysis of fracture phenomena in concrete and concrete structures, in the widest possible sense. It is held at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan and has been organised in collaboration between the Koiter Institute Delft of Delft University of Technology and the Laboratoire de Mecanique et Technologie. After the call for papers more than 200 abstracts have been submitted. The organisers wish to express their gratitude to the members of the Scientific Committee of FraMCoS-IV for their careful and prompt re- viewing of the abstracts: Paul Acker, Zdenek Bafant, Nenad Bi6ani6, Alberto Carpinteri, Hideyuki Horii, Tony Ingraffea, Bhushan Karihaloo, Eric Landis, Victor Li, Herbert Mang, Hirozo Mihashi, Harald Muller, Jaime Planas, Hans Reinhardt, Keitetsu Rokugo,Victor Saouma, Henrik Stang, Franz-Josef Ulm, Kaspar Willam and Folker Wittmann. This process resulted in the acceptance of 153 abstracts.