ICEM20 is the twentieth international gathering of a prestigious series of the Experimental Mechanics conferences coordinated by EuraSEM-European Society of Experimental Mechanics. This series of conferences are wholly devoted to advances in Experimental Mechanics applied to engineering and biomechanics. ICEM20 takes place in the beautiful city of Porto/Portugal, from 2 to 7 July 2023, being jointly sponsored by FEUP-Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto, APAET-Portuguese Society of Experimental Mechanics, and LNEC-National Laboratory of Civil Engineering. The conference attracted over 380 contributions, with 345 accepted submissions involving 1025 authors from 42 different countries all around the world.

The conference themes, which address novel and advanced topics in Experimental Mechanics, focusing Experiments and Applications in Engineering Mechanics, Materials and Biomechanics, including Testing and Diagnostics, Theoretical and Numerical Models, Composite and Advanced Materials, Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics, Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials, Tribology and Surface Engineering, Mechanical Design and Prototyping, Biomechanical Applications, Civil and Structural Engineering, Energy and Thermo-Fluid Systems, and Industrial Engineering, among other topics.

The conference also included an Open Forum on topic “Is Higher Education a Consumer Product?”, where an expert panel with many years of collective and active researchers and educators addressed the current state of higher education in engineering.

We believe that the meeting offered our delegates an excellent opportunity for the discussion and dissemination of their recent work on experimental mechanics techniques applied to engineering structures, components and systems, fostered research that integrates experimentation in mechanics, materials and biomechanics, and promoted exchange of ideas and international co-operation among academics, scientists and engineers in this important field of engineering.

We are indebted to the authors and special guests for their contributions. Each of the 348 approved papers offers an opportunity for thorough discussions with the authors and the scientific community. Particularly, we acknowledge the excellent contributions of the participants, their innovative ideas and research directions, their novel experimental, modeling and simulation techniques, and their invaluable critical comments.  We are also indebted to the outstanding keynote speakers who highlighted the conference themes with their contributions and covered the main topics of the conference. We also take this opportunity to thank the members of the International Scientific Committee and the reviewers for their time and helpful suggestions, the symposia organizers for their efforts and valuable contributions to the success of the event, and the local organizing committee for an absolutely superb organization of the meeting in this magnificent city of Porto. To all of you, we offer our gratitude.

Porto, July 2023