Plastics Engineering

This book presents in a single volume the basic essentials of the properties and processing behaviour of plastics and composites. The aim is to give engineers and technologists a sound understanding of basic principles without the introduction of unduly complex levels of mathematics or chemistry and thereby set plastics in their proper context as engineering materials.


This textbook pioneered the approach whereby both properties and processing of reinforced and unreinforced plastics are covered in a single volume. It assumes no prior knowledge of plastics, and emphasises the practical aspects of the subject. In this third edition over half the book has been re-written and the remainder has been updated and re-organised. Early chapters give an introduction to the types of plastics which are currently available and describe how a designer goes about the selection of a plastic for a particular application. Later chapters lead the reader into more advanced aspects of mechanical design and analysis of polymer melt flow. All techniques developed are illustrated by numerous worked examples, and problems are given at the end of each chapter - the solutions to which form one of the appendices.

Roy J. Crawford was Vice Chancellor of the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Prior to this he was Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. At Queen’s University, Professor. Crawford was responsible for establishing the Polymer Processing Research Centre which included the Research Group on rotational moulding of plastics, which he also founded. In 1998, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and in 2005 was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers. In the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours, Prof. Crawford was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to tertiary education. Prof. Crawford sadly passed away in 2016.