As sintering applications march toward a $30 billion global business, the models for sintering have progressed, but generally follow behind observation. Documentation of the steps needed to build to a quantitative and predictive theory are often missed. Sintering: From Empirical Observations to Scientific Principles partitions sintering applications and observations to show critical turning points required to establish modern sintering as a predictive science. This book, written by the most cited author in his field, is laced with people, organizations, critical steps, and important formulations in a mixture of history, personalities, and applications. Exploring how insights in seemingly unrelated fields sparked progress, it is also a teaching tool to show where there is success, where there are problems, and how to organize teams to leapfrog to new applications or plateaus of use. Randall German's Sintering: From Empirical Observations to Scientific Principles is a platform for directly addressing the critical control parameters in these new research and development efforts. - Shows how the theories and understanding of sintering were developed and improved over time, and how different products were developed, ultimately leading to important knowledge and lessons for solving real sintering problems - Covers all the necessary infrastructure of sintering theory and practice, such as atomic theory, surface energy, microstructure, and measurement and observation tools - Introduces the history and development of such early sintered products as porcelain, tungsten lamp filaments, bronze bearings, steel automotive components, platinum crucibles and more

Composites have been studied for more than 150 years, and interest in their properties has been growing. This classic volume provides the foundations for understanding a broad range of composite properties, including electrical, magnetic, electromagnetic, elastic and viscoelastic, piezoelectric, thermal, fluid flow through porous materials, thermoelectric, pyroelectric, magnetoelectric, and conduction in the presence of a magnetic field (Hall effect). Exact solutions of the PDEs in model geometries provide one avenue of understanding composites; other avenues include microstructure-independent exact relations satisfied by effective moduli, for which the general theory is reviewed; approximation formulae for effective moduli; and series expansions for the fields and effective moduli that are the basis of numerical methods for computing these fields and moduli. The range of properties that composites can exhibit can be explored either through the model geometries or through microstructure-independent bounds on the properties. These bounds are obtained through variational principles, analytic methods, and Hilbert space approaches. Most interesting is when the properties of the composite are unlike those of the constituent materials, and there has been an explosion of interest in such composites, now known as metamaterials. The Theory of Composites surveys these aspects, among others, and complements the new body of literature that has emerged since the book was written. It remains relevant today by providing historical background, a compendium of numerous results, and through elucidating many of the tools still used today in the analysis of composite properties. This book is intended for applied mathematicians, physicists, and electrical and mechanical engineers. It will also be of interest to graduate students.

Provides a thorough explanation of the basic properties of materials; of how these can be controlled by processing; of how materials are formed, joined and finished; and of the chain of reasoning that leads to a successful choice of material for a particular application. The materials covered are grouped into four classes: metals, ceramics, polymers and composites. Each class is studied in turn, identifying the families of materials in the class, the microstructural features, the processes or treatments used to obtain a particular structure and their design applications. The text is supplemented by practical case studies and example problems with answers, and a valuable programmed learning course on phase diagrams.