The 7th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium (ARMS7) took place on 15th – 19th October 2012 at COEX, Seoul, where it is a welcome back to where the 1st ARMS was held in 1997. The ARMS ripen by its age, and in short, ARMS7 was a great success. It was full of exciting knowledge and participating in ARMS7 was a great experience for me.
ARMS7 also has put the efforts on encouraging young rock mechanic’s researcher, by providing the ARMS7 Scholarship Award, and it was an honour for me to be one of the recipients of this scholarship award. In addition, the Students’ Night over the Han River Cruise has successfully promoted friendship between young rock mechanic’s community.
The ARMS7 was attended more than 200 participants with a series of wide-ranging presentations by distinguish speakers who brought out some recurring issues in rock mechanics. The keynote presentations were always the highlight of those days; they were presented by the very most expert in their field, which are; Prof Xia-Ting Feng, Prof. Robert Zimmerman, Dr. So-Keul Chung, Prof Lanru Jing, Dr David Potyondy, Prof Resat Ulusay and Prof Takatoshi Ito. Sharing their skills and knowledge to the next generation of young rock mechanics are very much valuable.
My presentation was on the last day of the symposium. I stand up my best to present my paper entitled ‘Discrete Element Study of a Block-flexural Toppling Phenomenon in a Rock Slope’. The environment was very welcoming, and I received some positive feedback afterwards.
In networking, ARMS7 has provided a good platform to build up networking. I did networks as effectively as I could and all the participants, especially the ‘senior’ were very approachable and helpful. For the youngster of course, we enjoyed the evening, exploring the Seoul together. The DMZ was the highlight of my visit to Seoul.
Lastly, I would like to drop my best word to UTM and ARMS7 for giving me the opportunity to participate. It was a great pleasure, great experience, and definitely I am looking forward to the next coming ARMS8. ‘Youkoso Japan 2014’.
