In the last few years, a significant increase in applications of MMCs has taken place, particularly in the areas of automotive, aerospace, electronics, and recreation. These include continuous fiber reinforced MMCs for cables in power transmission, high temperature superconducting wires, particulate MMCs in civilian aircraft and automotive applications, and high volume fraction, high thermal conductivity substrates for electronic packaging. Nevertheless, as with any novel material systems, there is a lack of fundamental understanding on the part of practicing engineers and designers. This...

This second edition of a highly successful book is completely revised and updated. It continues to have the same theme, viz., processing, structure, properties, and the performance of ceramic matrix composites. The term ceramic here includes inorganic silica-based glasses, crystalline ceramics, glass-ceramics, intermetallics, and carbon. All of these have the underlying unifying thread that they are all brittle and fairly high temperature materials.

After an introductory chapter, the processing, microstructure, and properties of various ceramic materials, reinforcements,...