Engineering mechanics of fibre reinforced polymers and composite structures. Based on the 4th international IUTAM summer school held at the CISM, Udine, Italy, July 5 to 9, 1993 (Q1898263)

[The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually.] CISM courses already have a long tradition (see the number of this course) and are widely known and appreciated as being both advanced and intensive. The papers are published by Springer-Verlag, and many of them became famous in their field. At least CISM offers the opportunity to bring together the leading experts in the world in a certain field and to develop their material in more than the usual one-hour talk. And, what is also important, if the lecturers do not wait too long to deliver their papers, one gets a rather actual overview on recent trends in the field. All this also holds for the present volume which is dedicated to the very trendy field of composite materials with special attention to micro-macro considerations, damage description, numerical considerations, and environmental effects. It starts with some introductory papers by Rammerstorfer, Böhm, and Starlinger, which is understandable for anybody with a background in continuum mechanics. The main concern is the mechanical modelling of such structures by means of analytical models. The second half of the treatise mainly deals with description and prediction of failure, rupture, damage, debonding and delamination, etc. This field occupies many researchers, and a good deal of advance has already been made, but, as we see, there are still many problems to be solved, and the present book is a good tool for trying that.