Proceedings of the American Society for composites

B o o k s & Publications was "Material Characterisation and the Assessment of Weldments" and this perhaps gives a better indication of the flavour of the proceedings than the actual title of the volume. The papers have all been written by experts for experts in the subject. Thus the volume is not likely to appeal to the generalist looking for an introduction to the fracture behaviour of welds. However for the engineer involved with the design of welded pressure vessels and already Possessing some knowledge of problems of joining thick steel plates the papers offer valuable new information since they are largely concerned with describing the results of recent research. The final paper is a report on a "Round Robin" exercise to assess the prediction of ductile instability in a large scale pressure vessel test based on a validation exercise devised by the Central Electricity Generating Board and is therefore an important document of record. In a well-prepared Preface a guide is given to the presentation of work in the papers on the major welding parameters which is helpful for those wishing to pursue specific topics. J. l"lutting

the proceedings volume. The papers have been reviewed prior to publication. The main objective of the conference and indeed of the American Composites Society as a whole, is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary exchanges among the scientists and engineers involved with composites. This was certainly reflected in the papers discussed in the conference which covered a wide range of topics such as Processing and Characterisation of composites as well Mechanics, Design and Non-Destructive Evaluation of composite structures. Polymer matrix composites clominated the whole spectrum of Paper presented. Metal matrix composites and fibre reinforced ceramics were represented with only 7 papers. This, again, underlines the potential that the polymer matrix composites offer in terms of weight reduction and, hence, energy savings in moving components. It was interesting to see that an ever increasing number of Papers dealt with Computer Aided Modelling of various aspects of composite manufacturing. Indeed, optimising processing conditions is one of the major challenges the manufacturing hdus,y faces. Sanford and/v~-~uEx~gh have derived a relation between conductivity and viscosity which can be very useful for in-situ viscosity measurements. It is worth also menPROCEEDING8 OF THE tioning the work of Campbell et ai AMERICAN ~ C I E T Y FOR who have conducted a systematic COMPO$1TF.S study of the effect of catalyst content, Tedmomlc Publi=hlng AG resin mixing and advancement, as ~ t t z e d a n d 1987 well as, the prepreg resin content 583 pp SFr 150 upon the properties of both resin and ISBN: 0 87762 569 7 prepreg. Their results were very The Proceedings of the Second indicative of resin behaviour under Technical Conference of the American various conditions and were very well Society for Composites have now presented. The topic of fracture mechanics been published from the Technomic Publishing Co. The conference was and/or modelling the mechanics of held in September 1987 at the failure of a composite was very well Llniversity of Delaware, Hewark, represented in the conference. A Delaware, LISA. A total 63 papers number of new approaches regarding have been presented in the conference, fracture mechanics analysis of com56 of which have been published in posites have been proposed, how-

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ever, in most cases, lack of experimental data was the major drawback= The conference was surprisingly poor on non-destzuctive characterisation with only 3 papers listed. Similarly, the papers on composite interfaces were insufficient in number and had nothing new to offer. The attempt by Kalantar and Drzal to evaluate the various parameters for the adhesion of polymer fibres to matrices is commendable, however, the fragmentation technique used, cannot be representative of i n ~ i c e conditions as it only determines the fibre/matrix adhesion at the point of fibre fracture and at very high matrix s~'alns. In general, the book of proceedings comprises a number of very interesting papers in areas like mechanical characterisation, fracture and processing of composites, but, it is rather disappointing in other important areas, such as, non-destructive testing and fibre/matrix interfaces.

C Galiotis

POLYURETHANES WORLD CONG~ 1987 PROCEEDINGS Technomic Publi=hlng USA 1987 952pp SFr 145 0 87762 529 8 This substantial 952 page volume in semi-stiff covers contains the contents of 156 papers presented at the congress which concerned itself with the miriad of applications in which polyurethanes have become established. The rapid diversification of polyurethane technology in the past five years has attracted enormous industrial interest such that it is becoming a universal material leaving behind its former category as a specialised plastic or rubber. Eighteen application sessions were held covering the following topic areas; ]. Processing Innovation; 2.

MATERIALS & DESIGN Vol. 9 No. 5 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988