Composite Materials : Manufacturing, Properties and Applications

Composite materials have been well developed to meet the challenges of high-performing material properties targeting engineering and structural applications. The ability of composite materials to absorb stresses and dissipate strain energy is vastly superior to that of other materials such as polymers and ceramics, and thus they offer engineers many mechanical, thermal, chemical and damage-tolerance advantages with limited drawbacks such as brittleness.

Composite Materials: Manufacturing, Properties and Applications presents a comprehensive review of current status and future directions, latest technologies and innovative work, challenges and opportunities for composite materials. The chapters present latest advances and comprehensive coverage of material types, design, fabrication, modelling, properties and applications from conventional composite materials to advanced composites such as nanocomposites, self-healing and smart composites. The book targets researchers in the field of advanced composite materials and ceramics, students of materials science and engineering at the postgraduate level, as well as material engineers and scientists working in industrial R& D sectors for composite material manufacturing.

• Comprehensive coverage of material types, design, fabrication, modelling, properties and applications from conventional composite materials to advanced composites such as nanocomposites, self-healing and smart composites
• Features latest advances in terms of mechanical properties and other material parameters which are essential for designers and engineers in the composite and composite reinforcement manufacturing industry, as well as all those with an academic research interest in the subject
• Offers a good platform for end users to refer to the latest technologies and topics fitting into specific applications and specific methods to tackle manufacturing or material processing issues in relation to different types of composite materials

Prof. Low gained his B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering from Monash University prior to taking up lecturer positions first at Auckland University and then Curtin University. In 1986-1988, he conducted post-doctoral research with Prof. Y-W Mai on fracture and toughening micromechanics of epoxy systems at Sydney University. He was awarded a Visiting Professorship by the Japanese Ministry of Education to work with Prof. Nihari at Osaka University in 1995/1996. He is a Fellow of the Australian Ceramic Society and serves on the editorial boards of several materials-related journals. He is also the recipient of the prestigious 1996 Joint Australian Ceramic Society/Ceramic Society of Japan Ceramic Award for excellence in ceramics research. Prof. Low has authored or edited more than 10 books (4 of these with Elsevier) and is author of over 250 archival research papers. His research interests include polymer- and ceramic matrix composites, nanomaterials, toughening and failure micromechanics.

Yu Dong is an Associate Professor within the School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. His main research interests are polymer nanocomposites, electrospun nanofibers/nanocomposites, green composites, nanomaterial processing and characterisation, micromechanical modelling, finite element analysis, statistical design of experiments and engineering education. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and 30 fully referred conference papers, written 10 book chapters and edited 3 technical books. He serves as an associate editor of two international journals, with the specialty recognition of nanomaterials and nanocomposites.