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The EUROMECH Colloquium "Dynamics of Vibro-Impact Systems" was held at th th Loughborough University on September 15 _18 , 1998. This was the flrst international meeting on this subject continuing the traditions of the series of Russian meetings held regularly since 1963. Mechanical systems with multiple impact interactions have wide applications in engineering as the most intensive sources of mechanical influence on materials, structures and processes. Vibro-impact systems are used widely in machine dynamics, vibration engineering, and structural mechanics. Analysis of vibro-impact systems involves the investigation of mathematical models with discontinuities and reveals their behaviour as strongly non-linear. Such systems exhibit complex resonances, synchronisation and pulling, bifurcations and chaos, exCitation of space coherent structures, shock waves, and solitons. The aim of the Colloquium was to facilitate the exchange of up-to-date information on the analysis and synthesis of vibro-impact systems as well as on the new developments in excitation, control and applications of vibro-impact processes.

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Vocal folds as a vibro-impact system.- Behaviour of granular materials in the field of vibration.- To the general theory of hand-held percussion machines.- Free manifolds of dynamical billiards.- Vibro-impact processes in systems with multiple impact pairs and distributed impact elements.- The impact based transportation process in a vibratory feeder.- The effectiveness of the impact damper with granular material.- Dynamics of gear-pair systems with backlash.- Nonlinear stability analysis of a single mass rotor contacting a rigid backup bearing.- Influence of contact and impacts on the dynamics of an elastic rotor with an elastic retainer bearing.- Wavelets transform in analysis and control of a piezoelectric vibroconverter with impact.- Stability improvement of the vibro-impact discrete systems.- Stability of periodic motions in systems with unilateral contraints.- On the calculation of resonance oscillations of the vibro-impact systems by the averaging technique, Systems with high degree of nonlinearity as vibro-impact ones - asymptotic approaches.- Simulation of liquid sloshing impact in moving structures

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