Papers presented at the March 1994 symposium are organized into five sections that progress from basic understanding of mechanical damage mechanisms and environmental effects to life prediction methodology. Five papers discuss the interplay between interfacial strength, residual thermal stresses, an

A review and summary of advancements related to mechanical behavior and related mechanics issues of titanium matrix composites (TMCs), a class of high-temperature materials useful in the propulsion and airframe components in advanced aerospace systems. After an introduction to TMCs, different authors review and summarise the advancements related to mechanical behavior and related mechanics issues of TMCs.

The International Symposium "Fatigue under Thermal and Mechanical Loading", held at Petten (The Netherlands) on May 22-24, 1995, was jointly organized by the Institute for Advanced Materials of The Joint Research Centre, E. C. , and by the Societe Fran~se de Metallurgie et de Materiaux. The fast heating and cooling cycles experienced by many high temperature components cause thermally induced stresses, which often operate in combination with mechanical loads. The resulting thermal / mechanical fatigue cycle leads to material degradation mechanisms and failure modes typical of service cycles. The growing awareness that the synergism between the combined thermal and mechanical loads can not be reproduced by means of isothermal tests, has resulted in an increasing interest in thermal and thermo-mechanical fatigue testing. This trend has been reinforced by the constant pull by industry for more performant, yet safer high temperature systems, pushing the materials to the limit of their properties. Dedicated ASTM meetings in particular have set the scene for this area of research. The proceedings of the symposium organized by D. A. Spera and D. F. Mowbray in 1975 provided a reference book on thermal fatigue which reflects the knowledge and experimental capabilities of the mid-seventies.

"Strength of Fibrous Composites" addresses evaluation of the strength of a fibrous composite by using its constituent material properties and its fiber architecture parameters. Having gone through the book, a reader is able to predict the progressive failure behavior and ultimate strength of a fibrous laminate subjected to an arbitrary load condition in terms of the constituent fiber and matrix properties, as well as fiber geometric parameters. The book is useful to researchers and engineers working on design and analysis for composite materials. Dr. Zheng-Ming Huang is a professor at the School of Aerospace Engineering & Applied Mechanics, Tongji University, China. Mr. Ye-Xin Zhou is a PhD candidate at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the University of Hong Kong, China.

Fatigue failures occur in aerospace,marine,nuclear structures and automobile com ponents from initiation and propagation of cracks from holes,scratches or defects in the material. To design against these failures, crack propagation life and fracture strength need to be accurately predicted. It is reported in the literature, that these failures often initiate as surface cracks, corner cracks and cracks emanating from fastner holes. Such cracks are with elliptic or nearly elliptic in shapes. The deviation from elliptic shape is due to varying constraint effect along the crack front. Even in situations, when the cracks are through the thickness of the material, there would be thicknesswise variation of constraint effects leading to three dimensional nature of crack growth. Accurate predictions of the crack growth in these cases by numerical methods can be made only by solving three-dimensional boundary value problems. Empirical relationships have been developed [1] based on Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics over years describing fatigue crack growth response. Some of these empirical relationships required modifications in the later stages, to meet the design applications. The Crack closure phenomenon discovered by Elber[2, 3] during the crack growth phase is mainly attributed to the local material yielding near the crack tip and the consequent residual plastic wake behind the crack tip. It helped considerably in understanding several aspects of fatigue crack growth and rewrite these relations.