Smart Materials and Structures

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the embryonic field of smart materials and structures. The text also presents a review of the sub-discplines of the field, and focuses on electro-rheological fluids, peizoelectric materials, shape-memory materials, and fibre-optics in particular. Readers are appraised of the technical challenges to the commercialization of products incorporating these material technologies, and the potential applicaitons of these technologies in virtually every segment of the international market place. Furthermore, the multi-disciplinary nature of the field of smart materials is expounded and the impact of these materials on many scientific and technologically diverse fields such as electronics, artificial intelligence, information technology, materials synthesis, physics, chemistry, molecular biology, computer science, the life sciences, control theory, the aerospece industry, materials processing the defence sciences, transportation and bio-technology, is enunciated. The final section deals with blue-sky research issues currently confronting researchers in the field of smart materials.