Impact and Dynamic Fracture of Polymers an Composites consist of thirty-nine reviewed and revised papers presented at the European Symposium on Impact and Dynamic Fractures of Polymers and composites held in Sardinia. The volume is divided into four sections. The first section deals with experimental methods and concepts in high-speed loading. Dynamic crack propagation is described in section 2, and rate-dependence and impact fracture toughness of plastics is dealt with in section 3. the last section is concerned with the impact damage of composites. Finally an extensive index facilitates the location of specific information for readers. This volume is the nineteenth in a series of special technical publications produced by the European Structural Integrity Society. It is an informative and original piece of work and can be thoroughly recommended to engineering designers, manufacturing engineers, and material scientists. Indeed, Impact and Dynamic Fracture of Polymers and Composites makes a significant contribution to the literature on this important subject, and will make essential reading to all those involved in this field of mechanical engineering.

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.

This book is an overview of ESIS Technical Committee 4's activities since the mid-1980s. A wide range of tests is described and the numerous authors is a reflection of the wide and enthusiastic support we have had. With the establishment of the Technical Committee 4, two major areas were identified as appropriate for the activity. Firstly there was an urgent need for standard, fracture mechanics based, test methods to be designed for polymers and composites. A good deal of academic work had been done, but the usefulness to industry was limited by the lack of agreed standards. Secondly there was a perceived need to explore the use of such data in the design of plastic parts. Some modest efforts were made in early meetings to explore this, but little progress was made. In contrast things moved along briskly in the standards work and this has dominated the activity for the last fourteen years. The design issue remains a future goal.

From Charpy to Present Impact Testing contains 52 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the Charpy Centenary Conference held in Poitiers, France, 2-5 October 2001. The name of Charpy remains associated with impact testing on notched specimens. At a time when many steam engines exploded, engineers were preoccupied with studying the resistance of steels to impact loading. The Charpy test has provided invaluable indications on the impact properties of materials. It revealed the brittle ductile transition of ferritic steels. The Charpy test is able to provide more quantitative results by instrumenting the striker, which allows the evolution of the applied load during the impact to be determined. The Charpy test is of great importance to evaluate the embrittlement of steels by irradiation in nuclear reactors. Progress in computer programming has allowed for a computer model of the test to be developed; a difficult task in view of its dynamic, three dimensional, adiabatic nature. Together with precise observations of the processes of fracture, this opens the possibility of transferring quantitatively the results of Charpy tests to real components. This test has also been extended to materials other than steels, and is also frequently used to test polymeric materials. Thus the Charpy test is a tool of great importance and is still at the root of a number of investigations; this is the reason why it was felt that the centenary of the Charpy test had to be celebrated. The Société Française de Métallurgie et de Matériaux decided to organise an international conference which was put under the auspices of the European Society for the Integrity of Structures (ESIS). This Charpy Centenary Conference (CCC 2001) was held in Poitiers, at Futuroscope in October 2001. More than 150 participants from 17 countries took part in the discussions and about one hundred presentations were given. An exhibition of equipment showed, not only present day testing machines, but also one of the first Charpy pendulums, brought all the way from Imperial College in London. From Charpy to Present Impact Testing puts together a number of significant contributions. They are classified into 6 headings: •Keynote lectures, •Micromechanisms, •Polymers, •Testing procedures, •Applications, •Modelling.

Conference proceedings of the Fourteenth American Society for Composites held on the September 27-29 1999 at the Holiday Inn-1675 Conference Centre, Fairborn, Ohio.