History of CompTest

The CompTest conference series aims to gather the European scientific community working in the field of testing and modelling of composites. They were initially inspired by the European Conferences on Composite Testing and Standardization (CTS) created by Dr Graham Sims (NPL, UK), which took place in Amsterdam in 1992, Hamburg in 1994 and Lisbon in 1998.

Michael Wisnom and Fabrice Pierron first met as attendees of the Hamburg conference and discovered a shared interest in experimental testing. After the CTS series was discontinued Fabrice decided to organise a conference with a similar emphasis on composites testing.

The first CompTest Conference was co-chaired by Michael Wisnom and took place in Châlons-en-Champagne, France in January 2003. Its general focus was extended to model identification with the idea that emergent full-field deformation imaging techniques would progress testing techniques and identification of key models. The conference was a great success, attracting around 100 participants from 15 countries. As a result, Michael Wisnom launched the second CompTest Conference in Bristol in September, 2004. Since then, the CompTest conference series has been held approximately every two years. It is overseen by a steering group made up of the chairs of past conferences.

Please see our Past Conferences section for links and further information relating to previous CompTest conferences.


Participants of CompTest 2011. Lausanne, Switzerland.