This IUTAM Symposium was the first international conference on asymptotic methods for turbulent shear flows. It was the aim of this Symposium to bring together the experts and research workers to discuss recent work in this field. There was general consensus among the participants of the Symposium, that the asymptotic methods provide powerful tool for turbulence modelling, which ought to be used more intensively in practice in addition to the numerical meth- ods. This was the Scientific Committee: K. Gersten (Germany, Chairman) A. Kluwick (Austria) J. - P. Guiraud (France) F. T. Smith (United Kingdom) V. V. Sychev (Russia) S. Kida (Japan) H. K. Moffat (United Kingdom) J. D. A. Walker (USA) We are very thankful that the Symposium was sponsored by the following organizations: * International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics * Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn * Gesellschaft der Freunde der Ruhr-Universitiit, Bochum * Institut fur Energie-, System-, Material- und Umwelttechnik e. V. , Bochum * Ruhrgas AG, Essen * Dresdner Bank, Bochum * Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht * Vieweg-Verlag, Wiesbaden We thank in particular the Rektor of the Ruhr University, Professor M.
Bormann, who was host of the Symposium and made possible that the Symposium could take place on the campus. The following persons, who helped in organizing the Symposium and made sure that everything was working smoothly and efficiently during the Symposium, de- serve our special thanks: Bernard Rocklage, Gerta Marliani, Petra Berkner and Th.