From 27 to 30 October 2025, the 19th Unified International Technical Conference on Refractories (UNITECR) took place in Cancun, Mexico. This technical conference focused on refractories under the theme “Sustainability Meets Intelligence – Shaping the Future of Refractories.”

Jeronimo Guarco presented his work “Assessment of refractory erosion resistance by a finger test evaluated with two different moving boundary models”. He introduced two modelling approaches to study refractory erosion, based on dynamic meshing and an immersed boundary model. These methods are coupled with an inverse calculation routine and combined with high-temperature experimental studies to quantify and analyze refractory wear. The results highlight the potential of the immersed boundary method as a robust and reliable alternative to dynamic meshing, enabling more consistent determination of erosion parameters from experimental data.