Functionally Graded Materials 1996

Since a formulated concept of functionally graded materials (FGMs) was proposed in 1984 as a means of preparing thermal barrier materials, a coordinated research has been developed since 1986. The 125 papers presented here present state of the art research results and developments on FGM from the past decade. A wide spectra of topics are covered including design and modeling, fracture analysis, powder metallurgical processes, deposition and spray processes, reaction forming processes, novel processes, material evaluation for structural applications, organic and intelligent materials. Three reviews associated with national research programs on FGMs promoted in Japan and Germany, and the historical perspective of FGM research in Europe are presented as well. The resulting work is recommended to researchers, engineers and graduate school students in the fields of materials science and engineering, mechanical and medical engineering.

Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) has served as a unifying theme for interdisciplinary research for more than a decade. The biannual International Symposium on Functionally Graded Materials has provided a forum for research on materials with spatial variation in microstructures or chemistries and have brought together a small, but richly interactive, community of FGM researchers from university, industry, and government labs all around the world. This new volume brings to readers current advancements and information on the topic of Functionally Graded Materials. More than 150 researchers from 20 different countries came together in Estes Park, Colorado for FGM 2000 to bring this information to the rest of the research world. FGM continues to be a vigorous topic stimulating new materials research, and this proceedings will keep you informed of all the latest developments in this area. Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Functionally Graded Materials, Estes Park, Colorado, USA, September 10-14, 2000; Ceramics Transactions, Volume 114.

I am honored to chair this International Workshop on Functionally st Graded Materials in the 21 Century: A Workshop on Trends and Forecasts, and would like to first express my sincere gratitude to everyone participating. The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory and the Japan International Science and Technology Exchange Center (JISTEC) have co-organized this workshop with the sponsorship of the Science and Technology Agency of Japan and the cooperation of the Association of Mechanical Technology. This workshop is an international conference to focus on functionally graded materials and the aim is to provide an overview of the present global technical trends and the future development of functionally graded materials over the next 10 years. I am very happy to see many researchers meeting together here - including seven researchers invited from abroad. During the three-day oral sessions, 36 research reports will be presented, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is very anxious to hear and participate in the upcoming interesting discussions. At present, the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory is conducting fundamental and ground-breaking research in such major areas as materials science and technology, bioengineering, information & system science, advanced machine technology, energy technology, manufacturing technology and robotics. In particular, we consider research on materials science and technology to have the highest priority for the 21st century. and since 1996 have participated in the US-Japan joint research project, Precompetitive Processing and Characterization of Functionally Graded Materials.

Scientific research on functionally graded materials (FGM's) looks at functions of gradients in materials comprising thermodynamic, mechanical, chemical, optical, electromagnetic, and/or biological aspects. This collection of technical papers represents current research interests with regard to the fracture behaviour of FGM's. The papers provide a balance between theoretical, computational, and experimental techniques. It also indicates areas for increased development, such as constraint effects, full experimental characterization of engineering FGM's under static and dynamic loading, development of fracture criteria with predictive capability, multiphysics and multiscale failure considerations, and connection of research with industrial applications.

Seven years have elapsed since Dr. Renee Ford, editor-in-chief of Materials Technology, first suggested to me to publish a book on Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs). She said that the FGM concept, then largely unknown outside of Japan and a relatively few laboratories elsewhere, would be of great interest to everyone working in the materials field because of its potentially universal applicability. There was no book about FGMs in English at that time, although the number of research papers, review articles, and FGM conference proceedings had been increasing yearly. We discussed what the book should cover, and decided it should present a comprehensive description from basic theory to the most recent applications of FGMs. This would make it useful both as an introduction to FGMs for those simply curious about what this new materials field was all about, and also as a textbook for researchers, engineers, and graduate students in various material fields. The FGM Forum in Japan generously offered to support this publication program. is very difficult for an individual author to write a book that Because it covers such a wide range of various aspects of many different materials, I invited more than 30 eminent materials scientists throughout the world, who were associated with FGM research, to contribute selected topics. I also asked several leading researchers in this field to edit selected chapters: Dr. Barry H. Rabin, then at the U. S.

This book presents a detailed study on the vibration analysis of functionally graded piezoelectric actuators excited under the shear effect. Two types of actuator geometries viz. beam and annular plate are considered, where the material properties are assumed to have a continuous variation in accordance with a power law distribution. The generalized differential quadrature method is used to obtain the solutions, and is compared to exact analytical results. The methodology reported and the numerical results presented will be useful for the design of devices utilizing functionally graded piezoelectric actuators under the influence of shear.