COLLOQUIUM 655
Cutting mechanics of soft tissues: Nonlinear fracture and contact mechanics

25 August — 27 August 2025, Graz, Austria

Final Report

Dates and location

25 August — 27 August 2025, Graz, Austria

Chairperson

Michele Terzano

Co-chairperson

Mattia Bacca, David Labonte

Conference fees

  • Student/Poster Registration fee - standard: 300.00 €
  • Speaker Registration fee - standard: 450.00 €
  • Speaker Registration fee - early bird: 360.00 €
  • Student/Poster Registration fee - early bird: 260.00 €

What other funding was obtained?

Sponsored by Anton Paar Austria GmbH and ZwickRoell GmbH

What were the participants offered?

The Colloquium was articulated through a series of invited lectures and poster presentations. A dedicated poster session was held, during which members of the Scientific Committee evaluated all posters to identify the best one. A Best Poster award was subsequently presented to the author of the selected poster.

Coffee breaks and lunches were included in the registration fee. The social program featured a Welcome Reception and a Conference Dinner in the historical city centre of Graz. In addition, each participant received a conference bag containing the official booklet with the program and related materials.

The Colloquium was organised with the aim of fulfilling the criteria of the Austrian Ecolabel for Green Meetings.

Applicants (members)

  1. Benny Bar-On
  2. Szabolcs Berezvai
  3. Matteo Ciccotti
  4. Francesca Fantoni
  5. Behrooz Fereidoonnezhad
  6. Alessio Gizzi
  7. Gerhard A. Holzapfel
  8. John Kolinski
  9. Francesco Magni
  10. Stefan Schrammel
  11. Michele Terzano

Applicants (non members)

  1. Riccardo Alberini
  2. Marta Alloisio
  3. Philip Anderson
  4. Mattia Bacca
  5. Zdeněk Bažant
  6. Chandler Benjamin
  7. Alice Berardo
  8. Michele Ciavarella
  9. Tal Cohen
  10. Franz Dammaß
  11. Chelsea Davis
  12. Eric Euchler
  13. Julius Heinrich
  14. Wei Hong
  15. K Jimmy Hsia
  16. Shelby Hutchens
  17. Kaare H. Jensen
  18. Attila Kossa
  19. Santanu Kundu
  20. David Labonte
  21. Ruggero Macaluso
  22. Miguel Angel Moreno-Mateos
  23. Nikita Norkin
  24. Shima Norouzi
  25. Krishnaswamy Ravi-Chandar
  26. Masoumeh Razaghi Pey Ghaleh
  27. Alessia Ruzzier
  28. Andrea Spagnoli
  29. Jingyu Wang
  30. Yi Ting Wu

Scientific report

The mechanics of cutting in soft tissues is an area of growing interest due to its wide range of applications in biology, medicine, engineering, and robotics. Despite its importance, progress in this field has been hindered by the inherent complexities of the problem, which are physical, theoretical, and computational in nature. Cutting of soft tissues involves contact and fracture mechanics under large deformations, combined with frictional effects and the dissipative behavior typical of biological materials. At the computational level, existing modeling techniques have shown limited capability to capture large deformations associated with deep indentation, damage-induced fracture, and crack propagation under localized loads at the crack-tip region. On the experimental side, challenges remain in developing scalable and reliable methods to quantify displacement fields during deep indentation, crack initiation, and propagation.

The EUROMECH Colloquium 655 on Cutting Mechanics of Soft Tissues: Nonlinear Fracture and Contact Mechanics, held in Graz (Austria) from 25 to 27 August 2025, brought together experts from diverse disciplines — including applied and fundamental sciences, physics, engineering, and biology — to jointly address these challenges. Discussions covered a wide range of materials and scales, from soft biological tissues such as skin, vascular tissues, tendons, ligaments, and muscle to collagenous membranes, protein networks, cellulose, and biomimetic soft materials such as hydrogels.

The scientific sessions explored theoretical and experimental approaches to the fracture mechanics of soft tissues and biomaterials, cutting-based mechanical characterization, needle insertion in medicine and robotic surgery, as well as cutting and puncture phenomena observed in animals and plants. The Colloquium promoted extensive interdisciplinary dialogue and helped outline future directions for advancing modeling, experimental methodologies, and applications in this emerging field.

Number of participants from each country

Country Participants
United States 8
Italy 7
Germany 5
Switzerland 3
Austria 3
Canada 2
Hungary 2
Netherlands 2
China 2
Sweden 1
Israel 1
France 1
Singapore 1
Denmark 1
United Kingdom 1
Ireland {Republic} 1
Total 41