The fifth International Conference on Shaping of Advanced Ceramics, “Shaping 5”, will be held in Mons, Belgium, on January 29-31, 2013. The Conference will consist of invited and keynotes lectures, as well as oral and poster contributions. A student oral-poster contest will be held during the meeting. This contest will be supported by the Trust of the Journal of the European Ceramic Society (JECS Trust) which will provide prizes for the 3 best presentations as well as grants to encourage  applications from students for this contest (more info).

The first two conferences in this series were also organised in Belgium, by the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), in Mol (1995) and in Ghent (2002). The third meeting was organised in Limoges (France) by the French Group of Ceramics in 2006.
The previous conference, Shaping 4, was organised by Instituto de Cerámica y Vidrio (ICV), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), in Madrid in 2009, under the auspices of the Sociedad Española de Cerámica y Vidrio (SECV) and the European Ceramic Society.

Topics

The manufacture of advanced ceramics across a wide range of applications will be considered, since all of them share identical issues and problems with regard to shaping processes. Special attention will be given to the relationships between shaping and micro- and nano-structure, and the production of multi-materials and/or multifunctional systems.

The following topics will be included:

• Raw materials (comminution, granulation,...)
• Direct shaping and densification from powders
• Colloidal dispersion and surface modification
• Plastic forming (extrusion, injection moulding...)
• Thick films
• Complex micro– and nano-structures
• Porous materials
• Prototyping