The “Mechanical Behavior of Salt VIII” conference (Salt Mech 8) will be held May 26-28 on the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology campus. Nearly 100 university faculty members, industry, and government laboratory workers from all over the world will attend.

The conference continues a tradition started in 1981 at Pennsylvania State University, bringing together the expertise of engineers and scientists involved in the study of the constitutive thermomechanical behavior of salt while providing an opportunity to review recent developments in a rapidly expanding field of interest.

Some of the topics that will be explored during the conference include research and management of underground structures in salt formations; applications of salt mechanics in mines and caverns for hydrocarbon storage, radioactive waste disposal, and toxic waste disposal; and creep, damage, thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical coupled effects.

South Dakota Mines was chosen to host this year’s conference three years ago when the 2012 event was held in Paris, France. “We are honored to be hosting such an international conference and equally excited about the exposure our university will receive,” said Lance Roberts, Ph.D., head of the Department of Mining Engineering & Management.

The three-day conference will also include keynote addresses by Frank Hansen, senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories; Leo VanSambeek, vice president and principal consultant at RESPEC Consulting & Services in Rapid City; Mike Headley, laboratory director at Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead; and Heather Wilson, South Dakota School of Mines president.

For more information, visit www.sdsmt.edu/SaltMech8

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