Advanced composites are not without a trade-off. Their increased designability brings an increase in the complexity of their internal geometry and, as a result, possible modes of failure. When two or more isotropic materials are combined in a composite, the isotropic failure modes may also combine. In a laminate, matrix delamination, cracking and crazing, and voids and porosity, will often comb...

Topographical measurements of surfaces yield a lot of data which are usually presented by tables of height coordinates or by contour maps. Here a method is described to characterize the surface geometry by just a few parameters which quantify the functional properties: sphericity, twist and waviness. Examples of applications are given from the field of surface plate measurement. Some measuremen...

We analyze the growth stability of an epitaxial strained film on a flat substrate by the elastic Green’s function force monopole approach. We calculate and compare the strain energies and growth instability of three different forms of surface undulations: sinusoidal waviness, surface faceting and island formation. In general, the instability occurs beyond a critical length scale, in agreement w...