The ?eld of composite materials has progressed greatly over the last few
decades, as shown by the widespread use of ?brous composite - terials
for airframes, sporting goods and other lightweight structures. Enabling
this technological progress is scienti?c understanding of the design and
mechanics of composite materials that involve continuous ?bers as the
reinforcement. Current challenges in the ?eld of composite materials are
associated with the extension of the ?eld of composite materials from
structural composites to functional and multifunctional composites, the
dev- opment of composite materials for electrical, thermal and other fu-
tional applications that are relevant to current technological needs,
and the improvement of composite materials through processing. Ex- ples
of functions are joining (e. g., brazing), repair, sensing, actuation,
deicing (as needed for aircraft and bridges), energy conversion (as
needed to generate clean energy), electrochemical electrodes, el- trical
connection, thermal contact improvement and heat dissipation (i. e.,
cooling, as needed for microelectronics and aircraft). Processing
includes the use of additives (which may be introduced as liquids or
solids), the combined use of ?llers (including discontinuous ones) at
the micrometer and nanometer scales, the formation of hybrids (such as
organic-inorganic hybrids), the modi?cation of the interfaces in a
composite, and control over the microstructure. In other words, the
development of composite materials for current technological needs must
be application driven and process oriented. This is in contrast to the
conventional composites engineering approach, which focuses on mechanics
and purely structural applications.
