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...

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...