International Conference on Smart Materials and Nanotechnology in Engineering 2011

Smart materials can be defined as materials that sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli (e.g. mechanical, chemical, electrical, or magnetic signals). In the last decade, a wide range of novel smart materials have been produced for aerospace, transportation, telecommunications, and domestic applications.

Furthermore there is increased activity in integrating smart materials with nanotechnology to develop novel materials for the applications in biomaterials, sensors, actuators, and textiles. Nanotechnology would permit control of matter at the level of atoms and molecules which would form the building blocks of smart materials.

Smart materials are thus evolving from traditional fiber reinforced composite through functionally graded materials to the current nanotechnologically grown materials. These materials will thus have the capability of closely mimicking (biomimetics) nature enabling structures to act like human skin, or a leaf's chlorophyll.

The field of Smart Materials and Nanotechnology is very diverse with application ranging from bioengineering to photonics. However, the emphasis for this conference will be on their applications in aerospace. This does not preclude novel developments in smart materials and nanotechnology for other areas as a means of greater understanding of the basic properties and capabilities of this new class of materials.