Fluoropolymers are used in applications demanding service at enhanced temperature while maintaining their structural integrity and have excellent combination of chemical, physical and mechanical properties. Advancements in materials and processing technology mean that a huge amount of research is currently taking place into new, high performance applications for specialty fluorinated polymers. This book is a complete review of the current research in synthesizing new fluorinated high performance polymers and their application in the field of low dielectric constant materials, membrane based separation (gas and liquid) and proton exchange membranes. Special emphasis is given to the preparation of soluble high performance polymers by incorporating fluorine and different structural elements so as to use these classes of polymers in different membrane based applications, including low dielectric constant materials, gas separation, pervaporation, proton exchange membranes in fuel cells, and more. The coverage of processing properties and commercial aspects - as well as a practical assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of specialty fluoropolymers compared to other materials - enables engineers and product designers to apply the latest scientific developments in this area in a practical setting.

PVC stabilization, the most important aspect of formulation and performance of this polymer, is discussed in details. This book contains all information required to design successful stabilization formula for any product made out of PVC. Separate chapters review information on chemical structure, PVC manufacturing technology, morphology, degradation by thermal energy, UV, gamma, other forms of radiation, mechanodegradation, and chemical degradation. The chapter on analytical methods used in studying of degradative and stabilization processes helps in establishing system of checking results of stabilization with different stabilizing systems. Stabilization and stabilizers are discussed in full detail in the most important chapter of this book. The final chapter contains information on the effects of PVC and its additives on health, safety and environment. This book contains analysis of all essential papers and patents published until recently on the above subject. It either locates the answers to relevant questions and offers solutions or gives references in which such answers can be found. PVC Degradation and Stabilization is must to have for chemists, engineers, scientists, university teachers and students, designers, material scientists, environmental chemists, and lawyers who work with polyvinyl chloride and its additives or have any interest in these products. This book is the one authoritative source on the subject.

Handbook of Material Biodegradation, Biodeterioration, and Biostabilization, Second Edition gives extensive information on the microorganisms involved in the biodegradation of materials, along with the biocides which are permitted for use according to the most up-to-date worldwide legislation. Mechanisms of biodegradation and biodeterioration, results of biodeterioration, and methods of biostabilization are covered for a large number of products, making the title relevant for a range of industries and applications, including construction, coatings/paints, medical and pharmaceutical applications, and electronics. In addition, the health and safety aspects of biocide application are covered in detail, as well as the personal protection of practitioners who are required to use them. The contents and the most-up-to-date information make this book essential for almost all the fields of applied chemistry.

Recent Advances in Smart Self-Healing Polymers and Composites examines the advances made in smart materials over the last few decades and their significant applications in aerospace, automotive, civil, mechanical, medical, and communication engineering fields. Based on a thorough review of the literature, the book identifies "smart self-healing polymers and composites" as one of the most popular, challenging, and promising areas of research. Readers will find valuable information compiled by a large pool of researchers who not only studied the latest datasets, but also reached out to leading contributors for insights and forward-thinking analogies.

Fatigue of Textile Composites provides a current, state-of-art review on recent investigations on the fatigue behavior of composite materials, mainly those reinforced with textiles. As this particular group of composite materials is extremely important for a wide variety of industrial applications, including automotive, aeronautical, and marine, etc., mainly due to their peculiarities and advantages with respect to unidirectional laminated composites, the text presents comprehensive information on the huge variety of interlacement geometric architectures that are suitable for a broad range of different applications, their excellent drapability and versatility, which is highly important for complex double-curvature shape components and three-dimensional woven fabrics without plane reinforcement, and their main mechanical characteristics which are currently in high demand from industry.

Characterization of Nanomaterials in Complex Environmental and Biological Media covers the novel properties of nanomaterials and their applications to consumer products and industrial processes. The book fills the growing gap in this challenging area, bringing together disparate strands in chemistry, physics, biology, and other relevant disciplines. It provides an overview on nanotechnology, nanomaterials, nano(eco)toxicology, and nanomaterial characterization, focusing on the characterization of a range of nanomaterial physicochemical properties of relevance to environmental and toxicological studies and their available analytical techniques. Readers will find a multidisciplinary approach that provides highly skilled scientists, engineers, and technicians with the tools they need to understand and interpret complicated sets of data obtained through sophisticated analytical techniques.

Hydroxyapatite in the form of hydroxycarbonate apatite is the principal mineral component of bone tissue in mammals. In Bioceramics, it is classed as a bioactive material, which means bone tissue grows directly on it when placed in apposition without intervening fibrous tissue. Hydroxyapatite is hence commonly used as bone grafts, fillers and as coatings for metal implants. This important book provides an overview of the most recent research and developments involving hydroxyapatite as a key material in medicine and its application.

Toughening Mechanisms in Composite Materials aims to provide a comprehensive and technically detailed coverage of composites and their toughening mechanisms. Unique in its direct and comprehensive approach, the book presents fundamental knowledge on composites' toughening mechanisms as well as a comprehensive treatment of numerical methods. This volume summarizes the current state-of-the-art and presents the most recent research outcomes in the field. It details the development of each of the techniques, beginning with basic principles, and new concepts are illustrated with examples wherever possible.

Structural Integrity and Durability of Advanced Composites: Innovative Modelling Methods and Intelligent Design presents scientific and technological research from leading composite materials scientists and engineers that showcase the fundamental issues and practical problems that affect the development and exploitation of large composite structures. As predicting precisely where cracks may develop in materials under stress is an age old mystery in the design and building of large-scale engineering structures, the burden of testing to provide "fracture safe design" is imperative. Readers will learn to transfer key ideas from research and development to both the design engineer and end-user of composite materials. This comprehensive text provides the information users need to understand deformation and fracture phenomena resulting from impact, fatigue, creep, and stress corrosion cracking and how these phenomena can affect reliability, life expectancy, and the durability of structures.

The advances in microsystems offer new opportunities and capabilities to develop systems for biomedical applications, such as diagnostics and therapy. There is a need for a comprehensive treatment of microsystems and in particular for an understanding of performance limits associated with the shrinking scale of microsystems. The new edition of Microsystems for Bioelectronics addresses those needs and represents a major revision, expansion and advancement of the previous edition. This book considers physical principles and trends in extremely scaled autonomous microsystems such as integrated intelligent sensor systems, with a focus on energy minimization. It explores the implications of energy minimization on device and system architecture. It further details behavior of electronic components and its implications on system-level scaling and performance limits. In particular, fundamental scaling limits for energy sourcing, sensing, memory, computation and communication subsystems are developed and new applications such as optical, magnetic and mechanical sensors are presented. The new edition of this well-proven book with its unique focus and interdisciplinary approach shows the complexities of the next generation of nanoelectronic microsystems in a simple and illuminating view, and is aimed for a broad audience within the engineering and biomedical community.

Clays are used as barriers for the isolation of landfills and contaminated sites. They are envisioned as long-term storage media for hazardous materials and radioactive wastes, and as seals in the case of geological CO2 sequestration or energy storage. Clay properties greatly influence the integrity, efficiency, and safety of these applications. Natural and Engineered Clay Barriers provides a clear view of the fundamental properties of clay materials and how these properties affect their engineering applications. This volume focuses on how the mass transfer properties (hydraulic permeability, gas fluxes, molecular diffusion, semi-permeable membrane properties), geochemical reactivity (adsorption, dissolution) and mechanical properties of clay barriers at the macroscale are influenced by phenomena that occur at clay mineral - water interfaces.

Silicon based materials and polymers are made of silicon containing polymers, mainly macromolecular siloxanes (silicones). This book covers the different kinds of siliconbased polymers: silicones, silsesquioxanes (POSS), and silicon-based copolymers. Other silicon containig polymers: polycarbosilanes, polysilazanes, siloxane-organic copolymers, silicon derived high-tech ceramics: silicon carbide and oxycarbide, silicon nitride, etc. have also a very important practical meaning and a hudge number of practical applications. These materials make up products in a variety of industries and products, including technical and medical applicatons. Polycrystalline silicon is the basic material for large scale photovoltaic (PV) applications as solar cells. Technical applications of crystalline (c-Si) and amorphous (a-Si) silicon (fully inorganic materials), silicon nanowires are still quickly growing, especially in the fi eld of microelectronics, optoelectronics, photonics. and photovoltaics, catalysts, and different electronic devices (e.g. sensors, thermoelectric devices). This book is ideal for researchers and as such covers the industrial perspective of using each class of silicon based materials. Discusses silanes, silane coupling agents (SCA), silica, silicates, silane modified fillers, silsesquioxanes, silicones, and other silicon polymers and copolymers for practical applications as polymeric materials and very useful ingredients in materials science.

Nano-Glass Ceramics: Processing, Properties and Applications provides comprehensive coverage of synthesis and processing methods, properties and applications of the most important types of nano-glass ceramics, from a unique material science perspective. Emphasis is placed on the experimental and practical aspects of the subject while covering the theoretical and practical aspects and presenting, numerous examples and details of experimental methods. In the discussing the many varied applications of nano-glass ceramics, consideration is given to both, the fields of applications in which the materials are firmly established and the fields where great promise exists for their future exploitation. The methods of investigation adopted by researchers in the various stages of synthesis, nucleation, processing and characterization of glass ceramics are discussed with a focus on the more novel methods and the state of the art in developing nanostructured glass ceramics.

The urgent need for infrastructure rehabilitation and maintenance has led to a rise in the levels of research into bituminous materials. Breakthroughs in sustainable and environmentally friendly bituminous materials are certain to have a significant impact on national economies and energy sustainability. This book will provide a comprehensive review on recent advances in research and technological developments in bituminous materials. Opening with an introductory chapter on asphalt materials and a section on the perspective of bituminous binder specifications, Part One covers the physiochemical characterisation and analysis of asphalt materials. Part Two reviews the range of distress (damage) mechanisms in asphalt materials, with chapters covering cracking, deformation, fatigue cracking and healing of asphalt mixtures, as well as moisture damage and the multiscale oxidative aging modelling approach for asphalt concrete. The final section of this book investigates alternative asphalt materials. Chapters within this section review such aspects as alternative binders for asphalt pavements such as bio binders and RAP, paving with asphalt emulsions and aggregate grading optimization.

Corrosion Engineering: Principles and Solved Problems covers corrosion engineering through an extensive theoretical description of the principles of corrosion theory, passivity and corrosion prevention strategies and design of corrosion protection systems. The book is updated with results published in papers and reviews in the last twenty years. Solved corrosion case studies, corrosion analysis and solved corrosion problems in the book are presented to help the reader to understand the corrosion fundamental principles from thermodynamics and electrochemical kinetics, the mechanism that triggers the corrosion processes at the metal interface and how to control or inhibit the corrosion rates. The book covers the multidisciplinary nature of corrosion engineering through topics from electrochemistry, thermodynamics, mechanical, bioengineering and civil engineering.

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are an emerging class of smart polymers which give scientists the ability to process the material into a permanent state and predefine a second temporary state which can be triggered by different stimuli. The changing chemistries of SMPs allows scientists to tailor important properties such as strength, stiffness, elasticity and expansion rate. Consequently SMPs are being increasingly used and developed for minimally invasive applications where the material can expand and develop post insertion. This book will provide readers with a comprehensive review of shape memory polymer technologies. Part 1 will discuss the fundamentals and mechanical aspects of SMPs. Chapters in part 2 will look at the range of technologies and materials available for scientific manipulation whilst the final set of chapters will review applications.

Chitosan in Biomedical Applications provides a thorough insight into the complete chitosan chemistry, collection, chemical modifications, characterization and applications of chitosan in biomedical applications and healthcare fields. Chitosan, a biopolymer of natural origin, has been explored for its variety of applications in biomedical research, medical diagnostic aids and material science. It is the second most abundant natural biopolymer after cellulose, and considered as an excellent excipient because of its non-toxic, stable, biodegradable properties. Several research innovations have been made on applications of chitosan in biomedical applications. The book explores key topics, such as molecular weight, degree of deacetylation, and molecular geometry, along with an emphasis on recent advances in the field written by academic, industry, and clinical researchers. Chitosan in Biomedical Applications will be of interest to those in biomedical fields including the biomaterials and tissue engineering community investigating and developing biomaterials for biomedical applications, particularly graduate students, young faculty and others exploring chitosan-based materials.

Unified Non-Local Theory of Transport Processess, 2nd Edition provides a new theory of transport processes in gases, plasmas and liquids. It is shown that the well-known Boltzmann equation, which is the basis of the classical kinetic theory, is incorrect in the definite sense. Additional terms need to be added leading to a dramatic change in transport theory. The result is a strict theory of turbulence and the possibility to calculate turbulent flows from the first principles of physics.

Many physical properties of our universe, such as the relative strength of the fundamental interactions, the value of the cosmological constant, etc., appear to be fine-tuned for existence of human life. One possible explanation of this fine tuning assumes existence of a multiverse, which consists of a very large number of individual universes having different physical properties. Intelligent observers populate only a small subset of these universes, which are fine-tuned for life. In this book we will review several interesting metamaterial systems, which capture many features of important cosmological models and offer insights into the physics of many other non-trivial spacetime geometries, such as microscopic black holes, closed time-like curves (CTCs) and the Alcubierre warp drive.

Although the present edition of Fundamentals of Creep in Metals and Alloys remains broadly up to date for metals, there are a range of improvements and updates that are either desirable, or required, in order to ensure that the book continues to meet the needs of researchers and scholars in the general area of creep plasticity. Besides updating the areas currently covered in the second edition with recent advances, the third edition will broaden its scope beyond metals and alloys to include ceramics, covalent solids, minerals and polymers, thus addressing the fundamentals of creep in all basic classes of materials.