Page 12 - Plastics Engineering

Preface to the Third Edition

Plastics continue to be exciting materials to use and a dynamic area in which to
work. Every year new application areas are being developed to utilise more fully
the unique properties of this class of materials. In addition, new processing tech-
nologies are emerging to exploit the versatility of plastics and to take advantage
of their ease of manufacture into all types of end products. It is very important
that students and those already working in the industry are kept fully informed
about these new developments. In this new edition an attempt has been made
to bring existing subject material up to date and many new sections have been
added to cover the innovations introduced over the past decade. The number of
Worked Examples has been increased and there are many more Set Questions
at the end of each Chapter. As in the previous editions, a full set of solutions
to the Set Questions is provided at the end of the book.
In this new edition, some re-structuring of the content has taken place. The
subject material on Fracture that previously formed Chapter 3 has been brought
forward to Chapter 2. This chapter now provides a more unified approach to
the deformation and fracture behaviour of non-reinforced plastics. Chapter 3
is new and deals with all aspects of the mechanical behaviour of composites
in much more detail than the previous editions. Composites are an extremely
important class of material for modem design engineers and they must form
an integral part of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. There are many
excellent textbooks devoted to this subject but it was felt that an introduction to
the analysis of laminates would be a valuable addition to this text. It is hoped
that the many worked examples in this new chapter will help the student, and the
practising engineer, to gain a better understanding of this apparently complex
subject area. Chapters 4 and 5 are essentially as before but they have been
extensively updated. A more unified approach to the analysis of processing has
also been adopted.