This book certainly fills a gap in the literature about how patents play a crucial role in a material’s history and development, and would be useful to anyone researching or seeking to fi le a patent in the topical areas covered in the book. It would also be invaluable to any materials scientist who is interested in patent law or students interested in becoming patent lawyers, because it shows, to some degree, how materials development goes hand in hand with patents.

This volume presents recent research work focused in the development of adequate theoretical and numerical formulations to describe the behavior of advanced engineering materials. Particular emphasis is devoted to applications in the fields of biological tissues, phase changing and porous materials, polymers and to micro/nano scale modeling. Sensitivity analysis, gradient and non-gradient based optimization procedures are involved in many of the chapters, aiming at the solution of constitutive inverse problems and parameter identification.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is the focus of much interest in biology and bioengineering. Increasing understanding of the influence of the ECM on cell behaviour has led to the exciting possibilities of tissue engineering. Aside from new therapeutic tools, understanding the ECM is of course fundamental to basic cell biology research. Mimicking the Extracellular Matrix approaches this topic from both basic science and practical engineering perspectives.

Even such seemingly different materials like wood and sandstone share similarities: both are porous and exhibit hysteretic behavior upon water uptake and evaporation, i.e., their properties depend not only on the current state of the materials, but on the history of state changes. Both materials are examples for strongly-coupled elastic-fluid systems which are ruled by the interplay between the moisture content and the mechanical stress field. Porous materials which exhibit hysteresis are becoming increasingly important for carbon sequestration, multifunctional materials design and mechanical control of surface catalysis.

Providing up-to-date coverage of green nanomaterials and systems, this book provides comprehensive information on nanostructured materials, including their applications in energy and environmental sciences.

The development of smart materials for environmental applications is a highly innovative and promising new approach to meet the increasing demands from society on water resources and pollution remediation. Smart materials with surfaces that can reversibly respond to stimuli from internal and external environments by changing their properties show great promise as solutions for global environmental issues. Many of these functional materials are inspired by biological systems, that use sophisticated material interfaces to display high levels of adaptability to their environment.