ABSTRACT
The performance of an engineering material is judged by its properties and
behavior under tensile, compressive, shear, and other static or dynamic loading
conditions in both normal and adverse test environments. This information is
essential for selecting the proper material in a given application as well as
designing a structure with the selected material. In this chapter, we describe
the performance of fiber-reinforced polymer composites with an emphasis
on the general trends observed in their properties and behavior. A wealth of
property data for continuous fiber thermoset matrix composites exists in the
published literature. Continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic matrix com-
posites are not as widely used as continuous fiber-reinforced thermoset matrix
composites and lack a wide database.
