Smart materials and structures: what are they?

Abstract

There has been considerable discussion in the technical community on a number of questions concerned with smart materials and structures, such as what they are, whether smart materials can be considered a subset of smart structures, whether a smart structure and an intelligent structure are the same thing, etc. This discussion is both fueled and confused by the technical community due to the truly multidisciplinary nature of this new field. Smart materials and structures research involves so many technically diverse fields that it is quite common for one field to completely misunderstand the terminology and start of the art in other fields. In order to ascertain whether a consensus is emerging on a number of questions, the technical community was surveyed in a variety of ways including via the internet and by direct contact. The purpose of this survey was to better define the smart materials and structures field, its current status and its potential benefits. Results of the survey are presented and discussed. Finally, a formal definition of the field of smart materials and structures is proposed.

Utilisation of Lignins in the Bioeconomy: Projections on Ionic Liquids and Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for Selective Separation and Recovery of Base Metals and Gold

“…Due to the nature of the molecule(s) as a novel commodity for many interesting natural and manufactured products [26][27][28][29], a modern bioeconomy [30][31][32][33] is not simply a rerun of former ones. This new discourse needs to help us understand how technologies [34][35][36][37][38] for managing and processing lignocellulosic materials both as biosynthetic moieties [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], biogenic wastes [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] or simply renewable biopolymer [59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]-both established and novel-should be deployed and integrated (or not) to meet developmental requirements of the sustainability paradigm [70][71]…”

Study of shape memory polymers snap‐fit for disassembly

“…Electronic manufacturers can integrate smart materials in the product design, ensuring that the product contains the necessary mechanisms to disassemble by itself using an external stimulus as a trigger at its EOL stage. As reviewed by Spillman et al (1996), there are two major types of smart materials that have been incorporated into AD: shape memory alloys (SMAs) and shape memory polymers (SMPs).…”

Complexity, fractals, disease time, and cancer

“…This complexity allows an evolving optimal functioning within the environment. This fact that has been recognized in systems engineering and is emphasized by the increasing number of engineered nonbiological but biomimetic systems that have appeared over the past few decades [2][3][4]. Although living systems are adaptive and evolve over time, the mapping of system evolution to chronological time is most often nonlinear [5].…”