Program planning committee

W.C. Harrigan Jr, Chairman, USA, J. Srife, Vice Chairman, USA, A.K. Dhingra, USA

The history of man is the history of materials. Primitive man used readily available materials such as wood and stone to make tools and provide shelter. With the dawn of civilization, man learned to smelt metals and used copper and bronze tools to aid in food gathering and preparation. The advantage of iron allowed man to increase the span of his structures as well as to decrease the bulk. Truss structures made from cast iron were used by railroads to span rivers and canyons. During the Industrial Revolution, iron alloys (steel) developed ductibility and improved flex strength. Steel expanded the scope of material designed from the truss to the cantilever beam. Light metals (aluminum and magnesium) committed designers to produce practical aircraft. During the 1950's, the emerging space age needs for lighter, stronger and higher temperature materials were filled by titanium, superalloys and polymers. Composite materials based on fiber reinforced polymers, metals of ceramics offer a new level of properties not obtainable with previous materials.

Advanced composites are ushering in a new era in materials science and engineering. Advances in enabling technologies such as CAD-CAM, robotics, artificial intelligence, are laying the ground work for exploitation of full potential of composite material in order to provide low cost material systems solution to structural engineering problems. Composites now rank with electrons and life sciences as the technologies that will shape our future. Just as man-made fibers revolutionized how people dress, man-made composite materials will transform structural design and systems engineering.

This conference is the fifth in a series of International conferences initiated in 1975 and the second conference to be held in the United States. ICCM V included product exhibition areas with over 70 companies active in composites.

The response to the call for papers was gratifying. Over 250 extended abstracts were recieved ranging in topic from space processing of metal matrix composites to moisture induced damage in composites. These abstracts were from authors representing 17 countries, indicating the truely international nature of interest in composite materials. The organizing committee spent many hours reviewing the papers in order to present the widest scope of topics. This effort necessitated increasing the number of sessions from the originally planned 20 to 26. These sessions have representatives from all 17 countries proposing contributions, and contain 150 papers.

The authors, whose work is presented in this book, are to be thanked for their persistance. They have endured moving deadlines caused by the large response to this meeting and have patiently responded with their manuscripts. This book and this conference would not be a success without them. Our thanks to the Vice Chairmen; Dr. K. Street from Canada, Dr. R. A. Bunsell from Europe and Dr. T. Hayashi from Japan. Their efforts to coordinate the activities throughout the world made the conference international success. Several others have encourged us throughout the last two years. Early meetings with past Chairmen Dr. E. Scala and B. R. Noton helped with initial planning and direction. Throughout this effort, our colleagues Joe Dolowy, J. K. Lees, and Dr. L. Cohen have offered encouragement and helped make things happen. Our thanks to the sponsoring societies, to Barb Kamperman, Elizabeth Luzar, and Patricia Kwiatek, of AIME and special thanks to Lois Starbuck and Nancy Cutrona for helping us with incomming mail and mountains of correspondance.

William C. Harrigan, Jr.
Composite Specialties, Inc.
Chatsworth, California

James Strife
United Technologies Research Center
East Hartford, Connecticut

Ashok K. Dhingra
E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company
Wilmington, Delaware