Plastics Product Design Engineering Handbook

Plastics and rubber materials, or polymers, are increasingly the first choice of engineers for those products where reliable, cost-effective performance and safety are essential. Already the volume of polymer used in the Western economies exceeds that of metals. Today's engineers must have a thorough grounding in the properties and applications of polymeric materials; this book is the first general textbook on engineering with polymers. The first chapters explain what polymers are, how they behave and how articles are made from them. Next the author shows how the standard engineering techniques of stress analysis, structures, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and design can be adopted or adapted to cover plastics and rubber materials. The final chapter deals with interactions between processing and properties. An important feature of the book is the many problems which the reader can use to test and develop his understanding; full answers to these problems are provided. For further study a carefully selected reading list is provided at the end of each chapter.