Ninth Pan American Congress of Applied Mechanics (PACAM IX); Merida, Mexico; January 2-6, 2006

第九届泛美应用力学大会（PACAM IX）将于2006年1月2-6日在墨西哥梅里达召开。墨西哥国立自治大学（墨西哥自治大学）将是这次两年一次会议的主办机构。过去的会议为加强美洲工程学术界之间的交流提供了良好的场所。对于PACAM IX来说，墨西哥靠近美国大陆，这将使美国参与者的旅行成本相对较低，但将威胁到拉丁美洲的参与。因此，要求NSF资助美国以外的学者出席是至关重要的。达成的共识是，本着北美自由贸易协定的精神，PACAM IX将促进半球合作，并加强美国在工程，特别是应用力学方面的适当的半球领导作用。在会议上提出的研究成果将通过在《国际固体与结构杂志》特刊上发表的论文集和选定的论文来传播。

ABSTRACTThe Ninth Pan American Congress of Applied Mechanics (PACAM IX) will be held January 2-6, 2006, in Merida, Mexico. The Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) will be the host institution for this biennial conference. Past meetings have provided outstanding venues for enhancing communication among the engineering scholarly communities of the Americas. For PACAM IX, the proximity of Mexico to the U.S. mainland will enable relatively inexpensive travel for U.S. participants, but will threaten Latin American participation. Therefore, the requested NSF support to subsidize attendance by scholars from outside the U.S. is critical. The consensus is that PACAM IX will foster, in the spirit of NAFTA, hemispheric cooperation and enhance the appropriate hemispheric leadership role of the U.S. in engineering and specifically, applied mechanics. Dissemination of research presented at the meeting will be through a proceedings publication and selected papers published in a special issue of the International Journal of Solids and Structures.