The Department of Applied Mechanics of the Royal Institution of Engineers in the Netherlands (Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs) organised on April 2-4, 1990 the first National Applied Mechanics Congress about the theme: "Integration of Theory and Applications in Applied Mechanics" The idea behind this initiative was to bring together the Applied Mechanics communities in The Netherlands and Belgium and to create an environment in which new developments in the field could be discussed and in which connections to other disciplines could be established. Among an extensive list of possible...