Relaxation in Glass and Composites Author:George W. Scherer The purpose of this book is to show how structural relaxation and stress relaxation affect the stresses caused by thermal expansion mismatch in composites. Structural relaxation, which governs the time-dependent response of a liquid to a change in temperature, is not treated in detail in any textbook. This is a remarkable omission, since the imp... more »ortance of the phenomenon has been recognized for decades by people making glass-to-metal seals. Over the past dozen years the phenomenological theory proposed by Narayanaswamy has been shown to provide a very complete representation of structural relaxation behavior. That theory and its experimental verification are discussed in Part 2. The mathematical development of the theory is closely related to the phenomenological theory of viscoelasticity which is the subject of Part 1. The purpose of this volume is to review experimental studies of the viscoelastic properties of oxide liquids and to develop enough of the mathematical theory of viscoelasticity to permit the analysis of thermal stresses in composites.« less