IESL Young Members' Technical Conference 2021

By YMS Editorial Sub-Committee

IESL Young Members' Technical Conference 2021, the technical paper conference organized by the IESL Young Members Section along with the IESL Annual Sessions with the goal of allowing all IESL young members to present technical papers and discuss engineering-related topics with industry professionals and academia, was held on the 09th of October 2021 via an online platform, considering the country's current situation, under the immense leadership of Eng. Damith Disanayake, YMS Chairman Session 2020/2021. Dr. Samal Dharmarathna, the conference chairperson, and his team have done an excellent job of maintaining the quality of the conference. Along with the IESL Annual Sessions, this was the second IESL YMS technical conference, which is organized by a separate sub-committee of the IESL Young Members' section.

The conference received 145 abstracts, of which 107 were accepted. 59 full papers were received from the accepted papers, 32 of which were accepted for oral presentations in the areas of Civil Engineering (Structural & Materials), Mechanical, Chemical and Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering (Transportation & Geotechnical), Civil Engineering (Water Resources & Environmental). The conference accepted 13 posters for poster presentations. Program of the day included four technical paper presentation sessions related to the final 32 papers. Also, that day included a poster presentation session for the final 13 posters. The award ceremony was conducted after these sessions with the participation of IESL President, Eng. K.P.I.U. Dharmapala and IESL President-elect, Eng. Arjuna Manamperi. The keynote speech was done by Prof. Rangika Halwathura on "Invention for sustainability". It was an inspiring speech and attracted over 250 participants. The Best Paper Award was awarded to the, “Mixed Design and Pavement Analysis of Thin Surfaced Asphalt Pavements for Low Volume Roads”. The Best paper in Theoretical/Methodological improvement Award was awarded to the, “Colloid Mobilization and Transport in Saturated Porous Media: Laboratory Column Experiments and Numerical Verification”. The Best paper in solution for an existing engineering issue Award was awarded to the, “Precision Dual Axis Tracker for Solar Concentrator”. The Best Poster Award was awarded to the, “GPR and LiDAR Synergy: Honeycomb detection in Concrete Structures”.

Best paper Awards

IESL Young Members’ Technical Conference 2021 successfully completed with the peer assistance and guidance of all the IESL committees. This would not have been possible without the commitment of the YMS executive committee, technical program committee, academic staff members and undergraduates from all of the Engineering universities who supported the conference committee in various ways.

Keynote Speech