Annotation Papers from the symposium held April 1988 in Sparks, Nevada. The focus is on significant advances in the area of damage tolerance and durability of composite structures. Twenty-seven contributions address delamination initiation and growth analysis, damage mechanisms and test procedures, and other general interest design and analysis topics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

With national trade barriers falling, causing the expansion of the com petitive global market, the question of quality control has become an essential issue for the 1990s. The time where the promise was to replace a product if it does not work seems to have passed; what is more impor tant now is not so much a reduction in what is going wrong but an increase of what is going right the first time (Feigenbaum 1990). This new trend is sometimes referred to as total quality. Among the many advantages ofthis zero-defect manufacturing policy, we can enumerate (Laurin 1990): superior marketability of wholly de pendable products, enormous gain in productivity, elimination of waste ful cost in replacing poor quality work and retrofitting rejected products from the field. Although total quality is a relatively new and attractive concept for mass products such as cars, consumer electronics and per sonal computers, in many fields, mainly aerospace and military, it has been the rule for years because of security reasons.

A collection of 16 papers from an international symposium in San Antonio, November 1990, focusing on the necessary coordination between materials scientists, stress analysts, and non-destructive evaluation specialists, for successfully designing, building, certifying, and maintaining composite struc

The advantages of composite materials include a high specific strength and stiffness, formability, and a comparative resistance to fatigue cracking and corrosion. However, not forsaking these advantages, composite materials are prone to a wide range of defects and damage that can significantly reduce the residual strength and stiffness of a structu

Offers information on the fundamental principles, processes, methods and procedures related to fibre-reinforced composites. The book presents a comparative view, and provides design properties of polymeric, metal, ceramic and cement matrix composites. It also gives current test methods, joining techniques and design methodologies.