I wish to express my full indebtedness to all researchers in the field. Without their outstanding contribution to knowledge, this book would not have been written. The author wishes to express his sincere thanks and gratitude to Professors M. F. Ashby (University of Cambridge), N. D. Cristescu (University ofFlorida), N. Davids (The Pennsylvania State University), H. F. Frost (Dartmouth College), A W. Hendry (University of Edinburgh), F. A Leckie (University of California, Santa Barbara), A K. Mukherjee (University of California, Davis), T. Nojima (Kyoto University), J. T. Pindera (University of Waterloo), J. W. Provan (University of Victoria), K. Tanaka (Kyoto University), Y Tomita (Kobe University) and G. A Webster (Imperial College), and to Dr. H. J. Sutherland (Sandia National Laboratories). Permission granted to the author for the reproduction of figures and/or data by the following scientific societies, publishers and journals is gratefully acknowledged: ASME International, ASTM, Academic Press, Inc.
, Addison Wesley Longman (Pearson Education), American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, Archives of Mechanics I Engineering Transactions (archiwum mechaniki stosawanej I rozprawy inzynierskie, Warsaw, Poland), British Textile Technology Group, Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd. (USA), Chapman & Hall Ltd. (International Thomson Publishing Services Ltd. ), Elsevier Science-NL (The Netherlands), Elsevier Science Limited (U. K. ), Elsevier SequoiaS. A (Switzerland), John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , lOP Publishing Limited (UK), Kluwer Academic Publishers (The Netherlands), Les Editions de Physique Les Ulis (France), Pergamon Press Ltd. (U. S. A), Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc.