ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a class of complex materials, composites, in which nonwoven fibers are deliberately oriented in a matrix in such a way as to increase its structural efficiency. The first "high performance" composite material is as old as man himself: it is the human body—the bones and muscle tissue—that is a multidirectional fibrous laminate. The most widely used high performance composite of commercial importance today, and the forerunner of modem composite material science, is the pneumatic tire. One of the first applications of composite materials occurred in the aircraft industry when cloth fiberglass laminates were utilized for secondary structural applications such as radomes. In the literature on composite materials, one often encounters the term constitutive equation—a term borrowed from the science of rheology. One lamina of a filamentary composite consists of one row of parallel filaments surrounded by the matrix.
