New composite materials and semi-fabricates, as disparate in their nature as solid multilaminates and powder compacts, have been steadily increasing in importance. Their application to a variety of industrial situations is being made easier by the considerable development of conventional manufacturing techniques which fulfil many of the requirements imposed on such materials. At the same time, however, the degree of their exploitation can be limited by, either the inadequate final product properties, or simply - as in the case of particulate matter - by the inability of these techniques to produce significant quantities of the composite. For these reasons, combined with the ever increasing demand for highly sophisticated composites, attention has been focused on the dynamic manufacturing methods. Not only do they extend the range of the available routes, but they also offer the possibility of achieving chemical and/or structural syntheses of new materials from either the elemental or complex constituents. What is more, these techniques often tend to ensure integral bonding of the elements of the structure and they thus enhance the mechanical properties of the composite.

Although the problem of tool design - involving both the selection of suitable geometry and material- has exercised the attention of metal forming engineers for as long as this industrial activity has existed, the approach to its solution has been generally that of the 'trial and error' variety. It is only relatively recently that the continuing expansion of the bulk metal-forming industry, combined with an increase in the degree of sophistication required of its products and processes, has focussed attention on the problem of optimisation of tool design. This, in turn, produced a considerable expansion of theoretical and practical investi gations of the existing methods, techniques r,nd concepts, and helped to systematise our thinking and ideas in this area of engineering activity. In the virtual absence, so far, of a single, encyclopaedic, but sufficien tly deep, summation of the state of the art, a group of engineers and materials scientists felt that an opportune moment had arrived to try and produce, concisely, answers to many tool designers' dilemmas. This book attempts to set, in perspective, the existing - and proven - concepts of design, to show their respective advantages and weaknesses and to indicate how they should be applied to the individual main forming processes of rolling, drawing, extrusion and forging.

The last two decades have seen a steady and impressive development, and eventual industrial acceptance, of the high energy-rate manufact turing techniques based on the utilisation of energy available in an explo sive charge. Not only has it become economically viable to fabricate complex shapes and integrally bonded composites-which otherwise might not have been obtainable easily, if at all-but also a source of reasonably cheap energy and uniquely simple techniques, that often dispense with heavy equipment, have been made available to the engineer and applied scientist. The consolidation of theoretical knowledge and practical experience which we have witnessed in this area of activity in the last few years, combined with the growing industrial interest in the explosive forming, welding and compacting processes, makes it possible and also opportune to present, at this stage, an in-depth review of the state of the art. This book is a compendium of monographic contributions, each one of which represents a particular theoretical or industrial facet of the explosive operations. The contributions come from a number of practising engineers and scientists who seek to establish the present state of knowledge in the areas of the formation and propagation of shock and stress waves in metals, their metallurgical effects, and the methods of experimental assessment of these phenomena."