On October 9 to 12, International Conference on Lightweight Materials and Manufacture 2019 was held in Changsha. Over 200 academicians, scholars and experts from British, America, Russia, Poland, Japan, Spain, Romania, India, Hongkong, and other countries and regions attended this conference. Zhou Kechao, a vice president of Central South University (CSU), made a speech.

This conference was jointly sponsored by CSU, Imperial College London and AVIC Manufacturing Technology Institute and organized by the State Key Laboratory of High Performance Complex Manufacturing of our university, International Joint Center of Basic Research of Advanced Aviation Manufacturing Technology and Beijing Key Laboratory of Metal Lightweight Forming and Manufacturing, Beijing University of Science and Technology. The chairmen of the conference are Zhong Jue, an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering from CSU, Lin Jianguo, an academician of Royal Academy of Engineering and professor of Imperial College London and Li Zhiqiang, dean of AVIC Manufacturing Technology Institute.

As well known, energy and environment are two major issues which the whole world pays close attention to. All researchers in the fields of automobile, rail traffic and aerospace and government departments try to make products “green and high efficiency”, “low-emission” or even “zero-emission”. With increasingly mature usage of structure optimal design and new materials, more advanced production & manufacturing technologies are required to realize substantial emission reduction and meet the needs of industrialization of new structure and material. Consequently, the purpose of this conference is to improve the application of lightweight material and technological level of lightweight, enhance academic exchange among scholars from different countries, share the achievement and experience, fully understand the latest domestic and foreign cases and solutions of lightweight material and lightweight manufacturing technology, provide an effective platform to promote continuous development of manufacturing level of lightweight material and component.

The conference included 13 plenary lectures, 22 keynote speeches and 34 oral reports, 4 sub-forums including preparation of lightweight materials, design & manufacturing of lightweight component and structure, forming manufacturing & modeling and special processing & forming technology. Experts and scholars from different countries had in-depth discussions and exchanges on the latest development of lightweight material and lightweight manufacturing technology. There were 5 theses elected as outstanding theses; scholars from universities and research institutions including Japanese Toyohashi University of Technology, Imperial College London and CSU won the prize.

Before the conference, the periodical International Journal of Lightweight Materials and Manufacture held the 2nd Editorial Board meeting to discuss how to build the periodical into an international high-level academic periodical in the field of lightweight material and manufacturing. As one of the editor affiliations, our university has been active in the discussion and offering suggestion.

After the conference, the participants visited the State Key Laboratory of High Performance Complex Manufacturing and the Aluminum Alloy Material and Component Innovation Project Base of CSU and gave high appraisal to the research of CSU in the field of lightweight material and component manufacturing.