Heterogeneous Materials: A New Class of Materials with Unprecedented Mechanical Properties

This chapter presents a perspective on heterostructured materials, a new class of materials possessing superior combinations of strength and ductility that are not accessible to their homogeneous counterparts. Heterostructured materials consist of zones with dramatic strength differences. The zone sizes may vary in the range of micrometers to millimeters. Heterostructured materials can be defined as materials with dramatic heterogeneity in strength from one zone area to another. This strength heterogeneity can be caused by microstructural heterogeneity, crystal structure heterogeneity or compositional heterogeneity. Heterostructured materials is a fast emerging field that is to become a hot research field in the post nanostructured materials era. There is a huge research community in the area of nanostructured materials, which has been extensively studied for over three decades. There are many scientific and engineering issues that need to be addressed by both experimentalists and modelers from the communities of both materials science and mechanics.