Book excerpt: Aerospace presents an extremely challenging environment for structural materials and the development of new, or improved, materials: processes for material and for component production are the subject of continuous research activity. It is in the nature of high performance materials that the steps of material and of component production should not be considered in isolation from one another. Indeed, in some cases, the very process of material production may also incorporate part or all of the component production itself and, at the very least, will influence the choice of material/component production method to be employed. How ever, the developments currently taking place are to be discovered largely within the confines of specialist conferences or books each dedicated to perhaps a single element of the overall process. In this book contributors, experts drawn from both academia and the aerospace industry, have joined together to combine their individual knowledge to examine high performance aerospace materials in terms of their production, structure, properties and applications. The central interrelationships between the development of structure through the production route and between structure and the properties exhibited in the final component are considered. It is hoped that the book will be of interest to students of aeronautical engineering and of materials science, together with those working within the aerospace industry. Harvey M. Flower Imperial College 1 Design requirements for aerospace structural materials C. J. Peel and P. J. Gregson 1.