I wish to express my full indebtedness to all researchers in the field. Without their outstanding contributionto knowledge, this book would not have been written. The author wishes to express his sincere thanks and gratitude to Professors M. F. Ashby (UniversityofCambridge), N. D. Cristescu (UniversityofFlorida), N. Davids (The PennsylvaniaState University), H. F. Frost (Dartmouth College), A. W. Hendry (University of Edinburgh), F. A. Leckie (University of California, Santa Barbara), A. K. Mukherjee (UniversityofCalifomia, Davis), T. Nojima (Kyoto University), 1. T. Pindera (University of Waterloo), 1. W. Provan (University ofVictoria), K. Tanaka (Kyoto University), Y. Tomita (Kobe University) and G. A. Webster (Imperial College), and to Dr. H. 1. Sutherland (Sandia National Laboratories). Permission granted to the author for the reproduction offigures and/or data by the following scientific societies, publishers and journals is gratefully acknowledged: ASME International, ASTM, AcademicPress, Inc. , Addison Wesley Longman (Pearson Education), American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, Archives of Mechanics / EngineeringTransactions (arch;wum mechaniki stosowanej/ rozprawy inzynierskie, Warsaw, Poland), BritishTextileTechnology Group, Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd. (USA), Chapman & Hall Ltd. (International Thomson Publishing Services Ltd. ), Elsevier Science-NL (The Netherlands), Elsevier Science Limited (UK), Elsevier Sequoia S. A. (Switzerland), John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , lOP Publishing Limited (UK), Kluwer Academic Publishers (The Netherlands), Les Editions de Physique Les Ulis (France), Pergamon Press Ltd. (U. S. A), Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. (USA), Springer-Verlag (Heidelberg, Germany), Steinkopff Verlag Darmstadt, Tappi, Technomic Publishing Co. , Inc. (U. SA) and The InstituteofPhysics (UK).