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Concise encyclopedia of composite materials (revised edition)
Book Reviews Concise Encyclopedia of Composite Materials (Revised Edition)
Anthony Kelly (Editor) Elsevier Science, Oxford, 1994, 349 pp., ISBN 0080423000, £38/$57
This revised edition, available in paperback, is excellent value when one considers the quality and quantity of the various contributions. It is good for reading and makes splendid browsing; the individual contributions, some 65 of them, are first class essays (typically 2000 to 5000 words long) on a range of subjects from nanocomposites to plywood: but is it an encyclopaedia? I am afraid that it falls some way short of that exalted goal. Turning to the text itself, Professor Kelly gives a fine introduction. This sets the tone for the compilation. The theme of the work is the range of different composite materials from paperboard to carbon/carbon. A strong secondary theme is the mechanical performance of those materials, their single most outstanding property in respect of service performance. Quite rightly, although the main focus is on synthetic, fibrereinforced, materials, there is extensive coverage of all classes of composite material ranging from cermet nanocomposites to natural composite materials as well as discussion of wood-based products. Thus we learn that 'some worms function as cylindrical tubes under fluid pressure' shortly after being introduced to 'the phase development in cobalthardened gold electrodeposited alloys'. The browser cannot help but be stimulated by this wide diversity of well presented material. Each article includes a select bibliography for those who wish to study the field further. Each of the articles is written by an acknowledged world expert in the field and a skilled communicator. There is a good balance of academic and industrial contributions. The majority of the contributions are from the USA and UK, but France, Germany, India and Sweden are also represented. Despite a British Publisher and British Editor, the spelling is American. From the point of view of the reader of Composites Manufacturing the coverage of processing matters is disappointing. There is a section entitled 'Manufacturing Methods for Composites: An Overview', but, as an overview covering polymer, metal and ceramic composites with fibre reinforcement, there is little detail possible. There are also brief insights into manufacturing technology in the articles on the auto0956-7143/94/04/0241-02 © 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
motive, aircraft and helicopter industries, although there is no contribution from marine technology. It is when we look for detail of manufacturing technology that the work is at its least convincing. Given the weight of paper devoted to the mechanical properties of continuous fibre-reinforced laminates, one might have expected some discussion of the prepreg technology from which such materials are made. About all that you can find is that such materials exist, but not how they are made. The odd hundred words allowed for that subject in different parts of the volume compares unsatisfactorily with the 2000 words plus schematic diagram devoted to paper making. Issues such as tack and drape, which are so vital in the manufacture of laminates, are scarcely mentioned, let alone discussed in the sort of way that would allow the reader to understand how those properties are controlled. This imbalance between detail on processing and mechanical performance might lead the novice to suppose that, if you just bung it in the autoclave, the Halpin-Tsai equations will surely hold for the final product. It is where the title lays claim to being a 'Concise Encyclopedia' that the work raises an expectation that it fails to satisfy. My dictionary suggests that such an encyclopaedia should be 'a work containing exhaustive information on some one branch of knowledge, arranged systematically'. As noted above, the coverage of processing aspects can hardly claim to be exhaustive. The material has been selected from the 'Encyclopedia of Materials Science and Engineering'. Where necessary this has been brought up to date, and some newly commissioned articles are included. The articles are arranged alphabetically by title; thus we have 'Artificial Bone' and 'Asbestos Fiber' unhappily juxtaposed. This is followed later by the article on 'Carbon-FiberReinforced Plastics' preceding that on 'Carbon-Fibers': not my idea of arranged systematically, There is a subject index to help the researcher locate information, but the compiler has not done justice to the various contributors, possibly through unfamiliarity with the field. For example: there is no reference to sandwich structures despite there being two whole columns devoted to the subject on
pages 118 and 122; even the interface, or interphase, between fibre and matrix is not thought worthy of note despite a substantial section on pages 41 and 42; but, if you have a taste for the obscure, you will no doubt be pleased to find that SPHTS is worthy of inclusion, even if self-propagating high-temperature synthesis is not sufficiently important. These deficiencies, which are presumably also present in the parent work, make 'Encyclopedia' too grand a title. The right to be titled encyclopaedia is not dependent on mass alone. Concise, at least according to my Concise Oxford Dictionary, means brief, and implies that somewhere there is indeed an Encyclopedia of Composite Materials to which one can turn for extended coverage of the topics if required. This is not the case with the present volume, there is no 'higher authority' to which to turn. Indeed, quite the opposite, the articles in the 'Concise Encyclopedia' are claimed to be more authoritative than in the full 'Encyclop e d i a ' - w h i l e that is a feature in favour of the present work, it does not give the reader confidence in the title. One senses that the next edition of the full 'Encyclopedia of Materials Science and Engineering' will be an amalgam of the current 11 'Concise' volumes on different subjects. There are also places where concise (with a small c) is not an apt description: thus, even though it is not thought sufficiently important to justify inclusion in the index, the 'Rule of Mixtures' appears in 10% of the articles (xvii, 115, 125, 159, 175, 266 and 272). Restatement of such a cornerstone may be justified, but unfortunately the different authorities give different accounts: five basic, one advanced (the concise version of the Hashin and Rosen form), and one modified to include an empirical fudge factor. Despite my reservations about the title, this is a book to buy. I know of nowhere else that I would find such a well written collection of review articles.
F. N. Cogswell 10 Lather Lane Gainsborough Cleveland TS14 8DD, UK
COMPOSITES MANUFACTURING Volume 5 Number 4 1994
241
Anthony Kelly (Editor) Elsevier Science, Oxford, 1994, 349 pp., ISBN 0080423000, £38/$57
This revised edition, available in paperback, is excellent value when one considers the quality and quantity of the various contributions. It is good for reading and makes splendid browsing; the individual contributions, some 65 of them, are first class essays (typically 2000 to 5000 words long) on a range of subjects from nanocomposites to plywood: but is it an encyclopaedia? I am afraid that it falls some way short of that exalted goal. Turning to the text itself, Professor Kelly gives a fine introduction. This sets the tone for the compilation. The theme of the work is the range of different composite materials from paperboard to carbon/carbon. A strong secondary theme is the mechanical performance of those materials, their single most outstanding property in respect of service performance. Quite rightly, although the main focus is on synthetic, fibrereinforced, materials, there is extensive coverage of all classes of composite material ranging from cermet nanocomposites to natural composite materials as well as discussion of wood-based products. Thus we learn that 'some worms function as cylindrical tubes under fluid pressure' shortly after being introduced to 'the phase development in cobalthardened gold electrodeposited alloys'. The browser cannot help but be stimulated by this wide diversity of well presented material. Each article includes a select bibliography for those who wish to study the field further. Each of the articles is written by an acknowledged world expert in the field and a skilled communicator. There is a good balance of academic and industrial contributions. The majority of the contributions are from the USA and UK, but France, Germany, India and Sweden are also represented. Despite a British Publisher and British Editor, the spelling is American. From the point of view of the reader of Composites Manufacturing the coverage of processing matters is disappointing. There is a section entitled 'Manufacturing Methods for Composites: An Overview', but, as an overview covering polymer, metal and ceramic composites with fibre reinforcement, there is little detail possible. There are also brief insights into manufacturing technology in the articles on the auto0956-7143/94/04/0241-02 © 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
motive, aircraft and helicopter industries, although there is no contribution from marine technology. It is when we look for detail of manufacturing technology that the work is at its least convincing. Given the weight of paper devoted to the mechanical properties of continuous fibre-reinforced laminates, one might have expected some discussion of the prepreg technology from which such materials are made. About all that you can find is that such materials exist, but not how they are made. The odd hundred words allowed for that subject in different parts of the volume compares unsatisfactorily with the 2000 words plus schematic diagram devoted to paper making. Issues such as tack and drape, which are so vital in the manufacture of laminates, are scarcely mentioned, let alone discussed in the sort of way that would allow the reader to understand how those properties are controlled. This imbalance between detail on processing and mechanical performance might lead the novice to suppose that, if you just bung it in the autoclave, the Halpin-Tsai equations will surely hold for the final product. It is where the title lays claim to being a 'Concise Encyclopedia' that the work raises an expectation that it fails to satisfy. My dictionary suggests that such an encyclopaedia should be 'a work containing exhaustive information on some one branch of knowledge, arranged systematically'. As noted above, the coverage of processing aspects can hardly claim to be exhaustive. The material has been selected from the 'Encyclopedia of Materials Science and Engineering'. Where necessary this has been brought up to date, and some newly commissioned articles are included. The articles are arranged alphabetically by title; thus we have 'Artificial Bone' and 'Asbestos Fiber' unhappily juxtaposed. This is followed later by the article on 'Carbon-FiberReinforced Plastics' preceding that on 'Carbon-Fibers': not my idea of arranged systematically, There is a subject index to help the researcher locate information, but the compiler has not done justice to the various contributors, possibly through unfamiliarity with the field. For example: there is no reference to sandwich structures despite there being two whole columns devoted to the subject on
pages 118 and 122; even the interface, or interphase, between fibre and matrix is not thought worthy of note despite a substantial section on pages 41 and 42; but, if you have a taste for the obscure, you will no doubt be pleased to find that SPHTS is worthy of inclusion, even if self-propagating high-temperature synthesis is not sufficiently important. These deficiencies, which are presumably also present in the parent work, make 'Encyclopedia' too grand a title. The right to be titled encyclopaedia is not dependent on mass alone. Concise, at least according to my Concise Oxford Dictionary, means brief, and implies that somewhere there is indeed an Encyclopedia of Composite Materials to which one can turn for extended coverage of the topics if required. This is not the case with the present volume, there is no 'higher authority' to which to turn. Indeed, quite the opposite, the articles in the 'Concise Encyclopedia' are claimed to be more authoritative than in the full 'Encyclop e d i a ' - w h i l e that is a feature in favour of the present work, it does not give the reader confidence in the title. One senses that the next edition of the full 'Encyclopedia of Materials Science and Engineering' will be an amalgam of the current 11 'Concise' volumes on different subjects. There are also places where concise (with a small c) is not an apt description: thus, even though it is not thought sufficiently important to justify inclusion in the index, the 'Rule of Mixtures' appears in 10% of the articles (xvii, 115, 125, 159, 175, 266 and 272). Restatement of such a cornerstone may be justified, but unfortunately the different authorities give different accounts: five basic, one advanced (the concise version of the Hashin and Rosen form), and one modified to include an empirical fudge factor. Despite my reservations about the title, this is a book to buy. I know of nowhere else that I would find such a well written collection of review articles.
F. N. Cogswell 10 Lather Lane Gainsborough Cleveland TS14 8DD, UK
COMPOSITES MANUFACTURING Volume 5 Number 4 1994
241