General Introduction to Smart Materials

Chapter 1 In this introductory chapter, the spirit and the structure of the book are presented. In general, some fundamental aspects of various smart materials are described, and the stage is set for the coverage of the current family of smart materials as special stimuli-responsive smart materials capable of a variety of actual functions needed for a large family of engineering, scientific, industrial and medical applications. These functions include actuation, energy harvesting, and sensing, plus some other complimentary physical or chemical properties changed by external or internal stimuli such as electric or magnetic fields, fluid-thermal fields, strain and stress fields plus others such as the ionic field within the materials.