Smart Structures, Materials and Nano Technology in Engineering
Smart materials are active materials that are nowadays commonly used for sensing, actuation, and transduction for structural noise, shape and vibration control and health monitoring of offshore petroleum, aerospace, aeronautic, mechanical, civil and biomedical engineering. More recently, they were also used for energy harvesting from environment for autonomously and wirelessly powering of various temperature or pressure monitoring sensors and some medical (fluidic) implants and (surgery) devices. When surface bonded on- or embedded into-passive structures, smart materials provide them with additional active functionalities such as autonomously, wirelessly and self-reacting to their deformation or stress states and surrounding environment; thus, rendering them smart structures. On the other hand, nano materials were developed for enhancing passive structural materials performance; for example, for increasing their thermal and electrical conductivities or/and their mechanical resistance or stiffness. A recent growing tendency is to combine nano and smart materials in order to enhance synergistically the resulting smart structures performance and reach new designs or/and applications.
The present IJSNM article collection spans volume 9's issue 1 and issue 2; it contains 8 papers. They were spontaneously submitted following an open call to the participants of the joint 8th SMART and 6th SMN held in Madrid (Spain) from 5 to 8 June 2017. The latter attracted 250 submissions from 36 countries representing 5 continents, among which 220 ones were presented in 7 plenary lectures, 4 keynote lectures, 16 mini-symposia that were organized by experts in their related research fields, 1 special session, 3 general sessions and 1 Poster session. This major event, in the joined fields of ‘smart structures, materials and nano technology in engineering’, was supported by several academic and research institutions as well as by industrial companies and research centres.
Edited by
Prof. Dr. Ayech Benjeddou(Institut Supérieur de Mécanique de Paris, France)