ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ 347
References .................................................................................................................................... 347
The established need for lightweight and high-performance materials to satisfy the stringent
demands of the burgeoning industries of air and ground transportation and several commercial
products has provided the much-needed impetus for a plethora of research studies. This has culmi-
nated in the development and emergence of new and improved materials resulting from novel and
innovative combinations of conventional materials. During the time period spanning the early
1970s to the present, the preponderance of research efforts have essentially focused on the areas
of alloy design and use of novel processing techniques to synthesize high-performance, hybrid
materials, termed as composites, as economically attractive and potentially viable alternatives to
the traditional and newer generation of unreinforced metallic alloys [1-5].
