The VIII International Conference on Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures - Structural Membranes 2017, will be organised on 9 - 11 October 2017 in Munich, Germany . The previous conferences of these series were held in Barcelona (Spain) on 30 June – 3 July 2003, in Stuttgart (Germany) on 2 - 4 October 2005, in Barcelona (Spain) on 17 - 19 September 2007, in Stuttgart (Germany) on 5 - 7 October 2009, in Barcelona (Spain) on 5 - 7 October 2011 , in Munich (Germany) on 9 - 11 October 2013 and in Barcelona (Spain) on October 19 - 21, 2015.

The objectives of Structural Membranes 2017 are to collect and disseminate state-of-the-art research and technology for design, analysis, construction and maintenance of textile and inflatable structures. The conference will address both the theoretical bases for structural analysis and the numerical algorithms necessary for efficient and robust computer implementation. A significant part of the conference will be devoted to discuss advances in new textile composites for applications in membrane and inflatable structures, as well as in innovative design, construction and maintenance procedures.

In summary, Structural Membranes 2017 aims to be a forum for discussing recent progress and identifying future research directions in the field of textile composites and inflatable structures.

The conference is one of the Thematic Conferences of the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS) and a Special Interest Conference of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM).