This book, the first in this new field of materials science, aims to present a coherent picture of the design principles and resulting properties of self healing materials over all material classes, and to offset them to the current design principles for structural materials with improved mechanical properties. Where appropriate a comparison to natural materials is made. As such it will be a landmark and a reference work in the coming years.
The book consists of a number of invited contributions from leading experts in the field. While each chapter describes a separate approach or a different aspect of self healing materials, the common structure of each chapter creates a coherent and consistent picture of this emerging and challenging field. Hence the book is not only a valuable asset for professional materials scientists but it is also suitable as a text book for courses at MSc level.
