Special issue on Adaptive and Active Materials

The behaviour and mechanics of active materials is an approach that combines observed material behaviour with mechanism-based models that not only give an insight into the observed behaviour, but guide the development of new materials. This approach has been applied to shape memory metals and polymers, ferroelectrics, ferromagnetics, and recently to multiferroic materials, and has led to considerable improvements in our understanding of multi-field phenomena.

Multifunctional materials are the next generation of active materials. These materials include structural, sensing, and actuation components integrated into a material system.

A natural extension of multifunctional materials is a new class of bio-inspired materials. Bio-inspired materials range from detailed bio-mimicry of sensing and self healing materials to nano- and microstructures that take advantage of features observed in biological systems.

The October issue of Smart Materials and Structures features a collection of papers on these topics selected from the ASME 2008 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS 08) in Maryland, USA.

Click here to access the papers.