Self-healing Materials: Innovative Materials for Terrestrial and Space Applications

The book reviews the concept of the self-healing processes, starting with their occurrence in nature, for example in plants, human skin and so on, and leading to the most recent scientific discoveries and industrial applications. This review includes a description and explanation of a wide range of self-healing materials such as composites, polymers, anticorrosive smart paints, and coatings. Particular emphasis is given to the applications in the space environment, which is characterised mainly by vacuum, high thermal gradients, mechanical vibrations, and cosmic radiation. This book discusses the most recent and innovative results for controlling the self-healing materials for the mitigation of damages due to collisions with space debris and micro meteorites. The book concludes with a comprehensive outlook into the future developments and applications. The book is supplemented by an extensive survey of the literature.