• Yury Vetyukov, Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria
• Alexander Humer, Institute of Technical Mechanics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
• Josef Kiendl, Institute of Mechanics and Structural Analysis, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Munich, Germany

Two reasons primarily constitute the ongoing interest in the analysis of axially moving continua and sliding structures: First and foremost, numerous technical applications feature deformable structures, continuously moving across a given domain of interest. Just to name a few: transport belts and belt drives, hot metal rolling and sheet metal forming, rotating wheels and brake discs, laying of pipelines on the seabed, wire coiling, paper production, casting of polymer films, etc. Secondly, practical relevance, which manifests in technical difficulties in maintaining the desired regime of motion, non-trivial and even sometimes counter-intuitive behavior, is paired with intrinsic challenges in modelling and analysis. Owing to the underlying gross motion, axially moving continua and sliding structures do not lend themselves to a traditional material (Lagrangian) kinematic description of structural mechanics, since it becomes inefficient for this kind of problems as material particles enter and leave the control domain. Growing attention of researchers is devoted to various kinds of non-material modelling, both in the analytical studies as well as in the numerical analysis. Different problem-oriented forms of Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approaches presented in the literature originate from the strong form of the equations of structural mechanics, from the principle of virtual work or from the variational equations of Hamiltonian mechanics. Issues related to geometric nonlinearities, proper imposition of boundary conditions, moving frictional contacts, dynamic stability, inelastic material behavior require thorough analytical studies and sophisticated numerical techniques.
" The objective of this minisymposium is to bring together experts in the field for discussing recent advances in the analysis of transient dynamics and stationary behavior of moving strings, beams, plates/shells and solid structures. Contributions on advanced methods of mathematical modelling of axially moving structures, including approaches for studying small and finite vibrations, dynamic stability, time evolution of quasistatic configurations in presence of moving contacts or material nonlinearities are within the scope of this minisymposium, as are results on fundamental aspects of non-material (purely Eulerian, mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian, ALE) kinematic description in structural mechanics.