Customer Reviews

Crystals, Defects and Microstructures: Modeling Across Scales

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The publication of this book is very timely since it appears right before the happening of the first "International Conference on Multiscale Materials Model(l)ing", which has been held in June 2002 at the Queen Mary University of London. But it is the subtitle (Modeling Across Scales), not the title, that conveys you what the book's content is about. In other words, the author engages himself in the (difficult) task of showing you how real materials can be modeled (or thought of) by mean of a multiscale approach bridging the atomistic to the macroscopic structure & behavior. As you can well imagine, this is an outstanding task!

The book is organized in four parts and it contains 13 chapters:

Part I: Thinking about the Material World
1. Idealizing Material Response
2. Continuum Mechanics Revisited
3. Quantum and Statistical Mechanics Revisited

Part II: Energetics of Crystalline Solids
4. Energetic Description of Crystalline Solids
5. Thermal and Elastic Properties of Crystals
6. Structural Energies and Phase Diagrams

Part III: Geometric Structures in Solids: Defects and Microstructures
7. Point Defects in Solids
8. Line Defects in Solids
9. Wall Defects in Solids
10. Microstructure and its Evolution

Part IV: Facing the Multiscale Challenge in Real Material Behavior
11. Points, Lines and Walls: Defect Interactions and Material Response
12. Bridging Scales: Effective Theory Construction
13. Universality and Specificity in Materials

Considering the difficulty of the subject and how it has been presented throughout the book, the clarity of language and the good quality of both graphs and figures, this book deserves five stars.

This is the absolutely best book I have seen in the general materials science field--the writing is clear, the explanations excellent, and detail sufficient. The books title is correct, but I think a bit unfair--the book really shines as a general, graduate level introduction to all of materials science, if you take the quite reasonable view that the ability to better model crystals, defects, and microstructures forms the core of the field.

As the author staes in the introduction, this books teaches you habits of the mind and modes of thought that help link up the disparate fields that make up materials, mechanics, and condensed matter physics.

There is no book in my (admittedly limited) library I got more out of during the course of my studies.

Final note: the book has excellent references, and is typset beautifully.

This book is the first book on computational materials science that embraces all the scales of modeling (as the title implies). The first 4 chapters are pretty much a review in Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics, Continuum Mechanics, and Condensed Matter Physics. This book could be used as a supplement text for a condensed matter physics course or a stand alone text for a Computational Materials Science course. This book is required reading for anybody doing modern materials modeling. Finally, Phillips has a lively writing style. For example, if you already know about tight-binding methods you will not be bored by reading that section in the book.