Fracture of Polymers, Composites and Adhesives II

This book contains a selection of fully peer-reviewed papers which were presented at the 2nd ESIS TC4 Conference, held in Les Diablerets, Switzerland 13 - 15 September 1999. The meeting was designed to reflect the activities of the Committee over the last 15 years, and to plan future activities. The papers have been divided into four chapters under the headings of Composites, Elastic-Plastic Fracture, Adhesion, and Impact and General Fracture. These are convenient groupings, but there are many interactions between the areas, with the common theme of Fracture Mechanics underlying it all.

Volume is indexed by Thomson Reuters CPCI-S (WoS). The literature on fracture accumulated over the past few decades is abundant. It would be too overwhelmingly difficult to name every original contribution to the field by different individuals. Yet, a quick glance through even very limited part of the vast fracture literature in the past thirty or forty years or so, one is bound to come across one name - Yiu-Wing Mai, whose work covers fracture mechanics modeling on various toughening mechanisms, microstructure and property relations, processing and testing of polymers, ceramics, metals and their respective composites, and in recent years on nano- and bio- materials.