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.

"In a Functionally Graded Material (FGM), which is a kind of advanced composite materials, the composition and structure change gradually over volume, resulting in corresponding changes in the properties of the material. By appyling the possibilities inherent in the concept of FGM, it is anticipated that materials will be improved and new functions for them will be also created. A comprehensive description of status of the art and perspectives, modeling and simulation, processing and system, characterization of properties as well as applications of FGMs is covered in this book."--Jacket.

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.

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 (FGMs) were initially designed as thermal barrier materials for aerospace structures and fusion reactors and now they are also considered as potential structural materials for future high-speed spacecraft and recently are being increasingly considered in various applications to maximize strengths and integrities of many engineering structures. This book is a result of contributions of experts from international scientific community working in different aspects of FGMs and structures and reports on the state of the art research and development findings on this topic through original and innovative research studies. Through its six chapters the reader will have access to works related to processing, sintering properties and applications of functionally graded ceramics and new processing routes for FGMs while it introduces some specific applications, such as functionally graded annular fins and the high-performance self-lubricating ceramic composites with laminated graded structure. Besides, it presents an experimental crack propagation analysis of aluminum matrix FGMs and a unified accurate solution for three-dimensional vibration analysis of functionally graded plates and cylindrical shells with general boundary conditions.

"This volume ... consists of a book with full texts of invited talks and attached CD-ROM with Extended Summaries of 1225 papers presented during the Congress"--p. x.

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.

Mechanics of Functionally Graded Material Structures is an authoritative and fresh look at various functionally graded materials, customizing them with various structures. The book is devoted to tailoring material properties to the needed structural performance. The authors pair materials with the appropriate structures based upon their purpose and use.Material grading of structures depending upon thickness, axial and polar directions are discussed. Three dimensional analysis of rectangular plates made of functional graded materials and vibrational tailoring of inhomogeneous beams and circular plates are both covered in great detail. The authors derive novel closed form solutions that can serve as benchmarks that numerical solutions can be compared to. These are published for the first time in the literature. This is a unique book that gives the first exposition of the effects of various grading mechanisms on the structural behavior as well as taking into account vibrations and buckling.

The third International Symposium on Materials and Sustainable Development ISMSD2017 (CIMDD2017) will include a 2-day Conferences (07 & 08 November). Organized by the Research Unit: Materials, Processes and Environment and University M'hamed Bougara of Boumerdes, this symposium follows the success of CIMDD 2013-2015 and continues the traditions of the highly successful series of International Conferences on the materials, processes and Environment. The Symposium will provide a unique topical forum to share the latest results of the materials and sustainable development research in Algeria and worldwide.