The Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon, was the venue for the 1997 Cryogenic Engineering Conference. The meeting was held jointly with the International Cryogenic Materials Conference. John Barclay, of the University of Victoria, and David Smathers, of Cabot Performance Materials, were conference chairmen. Portland is the home of Northwest Natural Gas, a pioneer in the use of liquid natural gas, and Portland State University, where cryogenic research has long been conducted. The program consisted of 350 CEC papers, considerable more than CEC-95. This was the largest number of papers ever submitted to the CEC. Of these, 263 papers are published here, in Volume 43 of Advances in Cryogenic Engineering. Once again the volume is published in two books. CEC PAPER REVIEW PROCESS Since 1954 Advances in Cryogenic Engineering has been the archival publication of papers presented at the biennial CEC!ICMC conferences. The publication includes invited, unsolicited, and government sponsored research papers in the research areas of cryogenic engineering and applications. All of the papers published must (1) be presented at the conference, (2) pass the peer review process, and (3) report previously unpublished theoretical studies, reviews, or advances in cryogenic engineering.

This work constitutes the proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Electrical Machines and Drives. There are 83 papers altogether.