been cited throughout. Preface for her love,encouragement,patience,and understanding. has continued to be my strongest supporter,and I will be forever grateful edition.And as with the first edition,my wife and best friend,Maryanne, findings have enabled me to add important new dimensions in the second tifying the inevitable errors in the first edition,and their thesis research this project.My graduate students have been particularly helpful in iden- granting me sabbatical leaves,which were essential to the completion of students,and sponsors.I am grateful to Wayne State University for pro- sively updated to include coverage of both new and revised ASTM stan- Chapter 10 on testing of composites and their constituents has been exten- of the finite element implementation of the virtual crack closure technique. nomenological approach to understanding linear viscoelastic behavior of Wide Failure Exercise.Chapter 8 has been improved by adding a phe- 4 on strength analysis has been updated to include results from the World librium equations and strain-displacement relations from elasticity the- structures.To strengthen the emphasis on the basic principles of mechanics, Ronald F.Gibson viding a nurturing'environment for my teaching and research,and for As with the first edition,I am indebted to many colleagues,graduate problems have been added to most chapters,and new references have dard test methods.Finally,more example problems and homework composites.Chapter 9 on fracture has been updated to include coverage more detailed discussions of elasticity and finite element models.Chapter ory.Coverage of micromechanics in Chapter 3 has been revised to include the Introduction,and appendices covering the derivations of stress equi- I have added a review of the basic mechanics of materials equations in to nanocomposites,composite grid structures,and composite sandwich edition has new sections on recent applications of composite mechanics since the first edition of this book was published.Accordingly,the second There have been many developments in mechanics of composite materials