Plastics and rubber materials, or polymers, are increasingly the first choice of engineers when reliable, cost-effective performance and safety are essential. The volume of polymers used in the Western economy now exceeds that of metals, which requires today's engineering students to have a thorough grounding in the properties and applications of polymeric materials. The first chapters of Engineering with Polymers explain what polymers are, how they behave, and how articles are made from them. The authors then show how the standard engineering techniques of stress analysis, structures, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and design can be adopted or adapted to cover plastics and rubber materials. The book ends with chapters detailing interactions between processing and properties, and a description of a variety of approaches to designing plastics products, from practical advice to the use or further development of theoretical principles, backed up by examples and case studies. The book is aimed at mechanical engineering students and design engineers in industry and also at materials' and chemical engineers.

Plastics and rubber materials, or polymers, are increasingly the first choice of engineers when reliable, cost-effective performance and safety are essential. The volume of polymers used in the Western economy now exceeds that of metals, which requires today's engineering students to have a thorough grounding in the properties and applications of polymeric materials. The first chapters of Engineering with Polymers explain what polymers are, how they behave, and how articles are made from them. The authors then show how the standard engineering techniques of stress analysis, structures, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and design can be adopted or adapted to cover plastics and rubber materials. The book ends with chapters detailing interactions between processing and properties, and a description of a variety of approaches to designing plastics products, from practical advice to the use or further development of theoretical principles, backed up by examples and case studies. The book is aimed at mechanical engineering students and design engineers in industry and also at materials' and chemical engineers.

This book has its recent origins in a Master's course in Polymer Engineering at Manchester. It is a rather extended version of composite mechanics covered in about twenty five hours within a two-week intensive programme on Fibre Polymer Composites which also formed part of the UK Government and Industry-sponsored Integrated Graduate Development Scheme in Polymer Engineering. The material has also been used in other courses, and in teaching to students of engineering and of polymer technology both in the UK and in mainland Europe. There are already many books describing the analysis of and mechanical behaviour of polymer/fibre composites, so why write another? Most of these excellent books appear to be aimed at readers who already have a substantial understanding of stress analysis for linear elastic isotropic materials, who are thoroughly at home with mathematical analysis, and who seem often not to need much of the reassurance which numerical examples and illustrated applications can offer. In teaching the mechanics of composites to many groups of scientists, technologists and engineers, I have found that most of them need and seek an introduction before consulting the advanced texts. This book is intended to fill the gap. Throughout this text is interspersed a substantial range of examples to bring out the practical implications of the basic principles, and a wide range of problems (with outline solutions) to test the reader and extend understanding.