A Brief Introduction to Polymeric Materials

A structural engineer who wishes to use adhesives must understand at least the rudiments of polymer chemistry, in much the same way that a structural engineer working with metal alloys must understand at least the rudiments of metallurgy. A brief introduction to polymer material science is given in the following subsections. The underlying objective of this discussion is to simply define some of the terms commonly used to classify or otherwise describe polymers. Since this introduction is necessarily brief, the reader desiring a more detailed discussion is referred to any of