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At the end of 2023, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering was visited by two younger colleagues of Professor Zuheir Barsoum from KTH Stockholm, Department of Engineering Mechanics. Professor Barsoum is an important European expert in the field of designing, increasing the reliability and quality of welded structures. The Regional Technological Institute, the research center of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, also deals with similarly focused projects. "We test welded structures more, mainly in cooperation with industrial companies such as ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION; the team around Professor Barsoum perfectly manages theory and the transfer of research results into practice," states Miloslav Kepka, head of the Strength and Fatigue Life Testing Laboratory. He adds, "Targeted cooperation between these two workplaces, therefore, has great mutual added value."

Gustav Hultgren from KTH Stockholm visited the Regional Technological Institute for one week in November and one week in December. He brought the Winteria system with him. This laser quality control system for weldments is being developed by a start-up founded, among others, by KTH employees. The Winteria system can be operated in both a portable and robotic version. Gustav Hultgren presented this system and its potential first to RTI employees and then to several invited guests from industrial enterprises as part of a day-long workshop. Gustav Hultgren gave a lecture and presented the Winteria system also in Prague, as its use has great potential in assessing the quality of welds on steel bridges. "And as part of a joint project with the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, we are dealing with the potential of strengthening the welds of steel bridges using the HFMI (High-Frequency Mechanical Impact) method, which is another method put into practice by KTH Stockholm," adds Associate Professor Kepka. Gustav Hultgren's stay at the UWB Pilsen was financed from funds intended for long-term conceptual development and sub-programmed foreign experts.

As part of the Academic Career in Pilsen program, Mehdi Ghanadi, who is also a doctoral student of Professor Barsoum, like Gustav Hultgren, worked at the Regional Technological Institute at the end of 2023. Associate Professor Kepka comments: "Mehdi Ghanadi is definitely not a beginner in the field of welded structures! Before his current position at KTH Stockholm, he worked for 10 years as a computational strength analyst at VOLVO." At KTH, Mehdi Ghanadi is engaged in experimental research on weldments made from sheets of various thicknesses, and together with the staff of the Strength and Fatigue Life Testing Laboratory, he carried out fatigue tests in Pilsen on samples that were welded in Sweden and which he had sent to Pilsen in advance. In this context, he performed an interesting lecture on the given topic. As part of his study stay, Mehdi Ghanadi also visited other testing facilities in the Pilsen region, the Dynamic Testing Laboratory at VZU Pilsen, and the Mechanical Testing Lab at COMTES FHT. "We are planning joint publications or the presentation of the results of our research at this year's annual meeting of the IIW - International Institute of Welding," informs the head of the testing laboratory, Miloslav Kepka.

Both programs help to establish contacts and personal friendships with top European scientists and their teams. The development of collaboration between researchers from the Regional Technological Institute and KTH Stockholm is one successful example.