The Far East and Oceanic Fracture Society (FEOFS) and the Center for Physics and Chemistry of Fracture and Failure Prevention (PCFP) jointly organized a pair of conferences, FEOFS 2003 and 2nd ICPCF, on October 20-22 at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

Numerous commercial processes operate at temperatures exceeding 500 degrees Celsius. The materials used in high-temperature structures have design constraints which are in addition to those on materials used at, or near to, room temperature. These important additional constraints include time-dependent inelastic strain (creep), thermal stability of the microstructure and high-temperature corrosion. The addition of these constraints to those of low cost, strength, toughness, machinability, formability, weldability, and combinations of these, has led to the intensive development, over the past 50 years, of an extensive group of metallic materials: generally referred to as "high-temperature alloys".

Magnesium alloys are among the most promising ecomaterials for various high-tech applications in the 21st Century. This 2-volume set comprises the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Platform Science and Technology for Advanced Magnesium Alloys (PSTAM 2003). The papers cover a wide spread of perspectives on the academic fundamentals, and industrial applications, of magnesium alloys.

This volume focuses on the technology of metal and ceramic powders.

Since their inception Bioceramics meetings have provided a treasure house of information for both scientists and clinicians in the medical field. The clinical applications are numerous, in particular in the areas of orthopaedics, maxillofacial, plastic and ocular surgery, percutaneous devices, tissue engineering and sensors. This volume in addition to research papers contributed also presents selected overviews and discussions on recent bioceramics research and trends.

This First International Materials Symposium in Portugal was organised in order to provide a forum within which material scientists and engineers, drawn from a very wide range of specialties, could present and discuss new research findings and compare points of view concerning advanced materials.

Texture is a fundamental material characteristic which results from the microstructural evolution that takes place during various processes, including the thermomechanical deformation of materials. Therefore, texture-related phenomena will continue to be of great importance, because of their scientific interest as well as their effect upon industrial applications, in the 21st century.

This 3-volume set comprises the proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Aluminium Alloys: Their Physical and Mechanical Properties. The papers present the latest viewpoints of the world's leading aluminium experts concerning the basic understanding, and application, of aluminium alloys. The proceedings cover a wide range of related topics and represent the views of both academia and industry.

The degradation of materials and coatings in aggressive environments continues to be of great relevance to a wide range of industrial applications. The topic is of vital economic concern to the transportation, energy generation, and chemical processing industries in the developing, as well as the developed, nations of the world. The dual thrusts of conservation of resources and protection of the environment here strongly influence the tone of the technical submissions and thus again reflect the world-wide concern.

This book deals with the chemical and electrochemical reactivity of novel materials in various environments. Special emphasis is put on metastable materials such as amorphous and nanostructured materials including carbon nanostructures and the novel bulk metallic glasses. Properties include corrosion resistance, electrochemical and catalytic activities, hydrogen sorption properties etc. The materials are made by various non-equilibrium processes such as rapid-quenching, high energy ball milling and thin film deposition techniques. Hydrogen storage and new materials for Ni-MH batteries are topics of particular interest in this book.