This book contains eight chapters with original and innovative research studies in the field of grain boundaries. The results presented in the chapters of this book are very interesting and inspiring. This book will be very valuable to all researchers who are interested in the influence of grain boundaries on the structure and different kinds of properties of engineering materials. This book is also addressed to students and professional engineers working in the industry as well as to specialists who pay attention to all aspects related to grain boundaries and their impact on the various properties of innovative materials. The chapters of this book were developed by respected and well-known researchers from different countries.

Grain boundaries are important structural components of polycrystalline materials used in the vast majority of technical applications. Because grain boundaries form a continuous network throughout such materials, their properties may limit their practical use. One of the serious phenomena which evoke these limitations is the grain boundary segregation of impurities. It results in the loss of grain boundary cohesion and consequently, in brittle fracture of the materials. The current book deals with fundamentals of grain boundary segregation in metallic materials and its relationship to the grain boundary structure, classification and other materials properties.

Electron backscatter diffraction is a very powerful and relatively new materials characterization technique aimed at the determination of crystallographic texture, grain boundary character distributions, lattice strain, phase identification, and much more. The purpose of this book is to provide the fundamental basis for electron backscatter diffraction in materials science, the current state of both hardware and software, and illustrative examples of the applications of electron backscatter diffraction to a wide-range of materials including undeformed and deformed metals and alloys, ceramics, and superconductors. The text has been substantially revised from the first edition, and the authors have kept the format as close as possible to the first edition text. The new developments covered in this book include a more comphrensive coverage of the fundamentals not covered in the first edition or other books in the field, the advances in hardware and software since the first edition was published, and current examples of application of electron backscatter diffraction to solve challenging problems in materials science and condensed-matter physics.

This book contains two sections: Chapters 1-7 deal with contact mechanics, and Chapters 8-13 deal with fracture mechanics. The different contributions of this book will cover the various advanced topics of research. It provides some needed background with respect to contact mechanics, fracture mechanics and the use of finite element methods in both. All the covered chapters of this book are of a theoretical and applied nature, suitable for the researchers of engineering, physics, applied mathematics and mechanics with an interest in computer simulation of contact and fracture problems.

This book focuses on the emerging class of new materials characterized by ultra-fine microstrucures. The NATO ASI which produced this book was the first international scientific meeting devoted to a discussion of the mechanical properties and deformation behavior of materials having grain sizes down to a few nanometers. Topics covered include superplasticity, tribology, and the supermodulus effect. Review chapters cover a variety of other themes including synthesis, characterization, thermodynamic stability, and general physical properties. Much of the work is concerned with the issue of how far conventional techniques and concepts can be extended toward atomic scale probing. Another key issue concerns the structure of nanocrystalline materials, in particular, what is the structure and composition of the internal boundaries. These ultra-fine microstructures have proved to challenge even the finest probes that the materials science community has today.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.