Comprehensive and authoritative, this book provides a brief history of composite development. It reviews applications, the types of fibre used, and their respective indiviual properties. The authors explore organic matrices and their behavior and discuss composite manufacturing techniques, including those methods employed in the production of advanced metal and ceramic matrix composites. They provide theoretical treatments of composite behavior, with emphasis on the understanding of damage mechanisms. With extensive sets of sample problems accompanying each chapter, the book relates the sometimes rather abstract notions to the material being discussed.