This book, the second in the Woodhead Publishing Reviews: Mechanical Engineering Series, is a collection of high quality articles (full research articles, review articles, and cases studies) with a special emphasis on research and development materials and surface engineering and its applications. Surface engineering techniques are being used in the automotive, aircraft, aerospace, missile, electronic, biomedical, textile, petrochemical, chemical, moulds and dies, machine tools, and construction industries. Materials science is an interdisciplinary field involving the micro and nano-structure, processing, properties of materials and its applications to various areas of engineering, technology and industry. This book addresses all types of materials, including metals and alloys, polymers, ceramics and glasses, composites, nano-materials, biomaterials, etc. The relationship between micro and nano-structure, processing, properties of materials is discussed. Surface engineering is a truly interdisciplinary topic in materials science that deals with the surface of solid matter.
