Naturally there is a vast amount of such conferences, and naturally, too, my perspective is very limited - here are some initial ideas:

1. Basic, large scale materials science conferences which are often organized by means of a call for symposia topics - this means, smart materials are almost invariably covered, but not always the same types. This includes ...

- MRS Spring and Fall Meeting (see www.mrs.org)

- E-MRS Spring and Fall Meeting (see www.emrs-strasbourg.org)

- Euromat (see www.euromat2013.fems.eu for this year's event)

- CIMTEC conference is biannual and every 4 years, I believe, they have a focus

on smart materials, structures and systems (last in 2012,

see www.cimtec-congress.org/2012/ for that event) - this is regularly in

Montecatini Therme, so not that far from you.

2. Besides, there are numerous specialist conferences which are often dedicated

to individual types of smart materials. Part of the problem in naming those is that it

may not be entirely clear which materials you count as smart materials. In any case you have dedicated groups and organisations focussing on thermoelectric materials (www.its.org), piezoelectrics, multiferroics, shape memory materials, etc., etc., etc., and all of them are likely to have their dedicated events.

3. There may also be less material- but rather smart system based events. For these communities (like MEMS etc.), smart materials form an important part of the system, so they would be covered, too: We have the topic as part of enabling technologies in the SysInt Conference, for example: See www.sysint-conference.org for details.

Hope this helps a little. In any case I'll be following this thread.

Best regards,

Dirk Lehmhus

Dear Dirk Lehmhus

thank you for the answer.

I will add here some conferences that i know and some more that i found on the internet

SPECIFIC FOR SOME SMART MATERIALS---------------

- Euro EAP conference, devoted to Electroactive polymers: www.EuroEAP.eu

- ICFMSMA, devoted to Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys: www.icfsma.com

GENERAL PURPOSE-----------------------

- Adaptronic Congress, devoted to several smart-material based solutions: www.adaptronic-congress.com

- ACTUATOR conference, devoted to several smart-material based solutions but not limited to that, www.actuator.de

- the ASME conference on smart materials, adaptive structures and intelligent systems, http://www.asmeconferences.org/SMASIS2013/ (for the last event)

- the SETCOR international conference on smart materials and surfaces: http://www.setcor.org/conferences/SMS-Bangkok-2014/2

- the SPIE Smart structures: http://spie.org/x12228.xml

- ECCOMAS Thematic conference on smart structures and materials (SMART): http://www.mul2.polito.it/smart13/ (for the last event)

... and here are some further additions - there are the sensor-related conferences of course, too, like IEEE Sensors or Eurosensors, and then something I was not aware of before which just came in yesterday: The IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, see http://aim2014.org/

Below are some URLs of some annual conferences that I attend:

http://icast2013.com/

http://www.asmeconferences.org/smasis2013/

http://spie.org/x12228.xml

Each of these conferences is an excellent venue to learn about Smart Materials and Smart Structures. Dirk already mentioned SPIE and SMASIS above.