Functional and Structural Materials: Selected Peer Reviewed Papers from the 1st Brazilian Symposium on Functional and Structural Materials (Funcmat . August 19-21, 2009 (Materials Science Forum)

This special collection provides up-to-date knowledge concerning the field of functional materials such as shape memory alloys, piezoelectric ceramics and aluminium alloys. The articles therein also deal with recent investigations of quasicrystals and geopolymers: two classes of hybrid material that have attracted great scientific interest, given their unusual properties and potential engineering applications.In the first part, the papers address key issues concerning the application of two classes of functional alloy: (i) NiTi alloys, having important applications in the fields of smart structures and bioengineering; and (ii) CuAlBe alloys, as applied to non-welded pipe joints. In both classes, the papers focus upon industrial-scale examples associated with two classical metallurgical processes (electron-beam and conventional melting techniques). In the second part, three articles deal with two hybrid materials: quasicrystals and geopolymers. The former is a class of hybrid material i