Prof. Bernd Kröplin

We are very sorry to announce that Professor Bernd Kröplin passed away on January 1^st 2019.

Prof. Kröplin  was a recognized scientist in the field of computational mechanics. In the period 1988-2010 he was director of the prestigious Institute for Static and Dynamics of Aerospace Structures (ISD) of the University of Stuttgart. ISD was founded by Prof. John Argyris in the 1960s.

The research contributions of Prof. Kröplin to new numerical methods for structural mechanics applications, and in particular, for stability analysis of structures, are recognized internationally.

Prof. Kröplin maintained a close cooperation with CIMNE in the last 32 years. He was a member of the Advisory Scientific Committee of CIMNE. CIMNE, ISD  and TAO have participated in many research projects with funding from the European Commission. Together with Prof. Eugenio Oñate (director of CIMNE), he was founder and co-organizer of the series of international conferences on Textile Membranes and Inflatable Structures (STRUCTURAL MEMBRANES) organized by CIMNE and held at biennial intervals in Barcelona and Stuttgart or Munich (in cooperation with Prof. Kai-Uwe Bletzinger from Technical University of Munich) since 2003. The 8^th edition of the STRUCTURAL MEMBRANES conference will take place in Barcelona on October 2019: Form and Force 2019.

Among the many scientific texts written by Prof. Kröplin we note the book The World in a Drop. A Memory of Forms of thought in Water published by CIMNE in 2005 (in English and Spanish).

Prof. Kröplin was a very creative person with a passion for innovating in engineering. After his retirement of ISD in 2010 he has been active in different innovation and technology transfer initiatives.  Among these we note his contributions to inflatable structures (with application to smart inflatable shelters, high altitude platforms and airships for earth observation, tele-communication and transport of goods), batteries for electric vehicles, fresh water production systems, bio-medical effects of water for the human body and bio-resonance devices for medical applications, among many others. Many of these developments have been taken to market by the company TAO that Prof Kroplin founded in Germany and of which he was its current director.

The advice of Prof Kroplin in the technology transfer initiatives of CIMNE has been very relevant. As an example, his experience in creating the company TAO was taken by CIMNE as a model for the start-up of several spin-off companies, such as Buildair or Pneumatic Structures Solutions.

The death of Prof Kroplin is a very sad loss for CIMNE and the computational mechanics community in general. From CIMNE we would like to express our sincere condolences to the family, colleagues and friends of Prof. Kröplin.