Air, water, sand, salt, coal, petroleum are familiar elements in the everyday life but these form the basic sources of the world’s fastest growing industry – plastics. The last decade has seen the plastic industry to become the fastest growing industry in the world with a total annual production already more than 9 000 000 tons.
From a purely engineering viewpoint the following characteristics of plastics explain their increasing acceptance by industries and consumers alike. These characteristics are usually shared by all plastics, but there are variations between individual materials; light weight; corrosion resistance; electrical and thermal insulation; ease of fabrication; transparency of some materials, etc.
The increasingly successful application of plastics which take advantage of these characteristics have meant that plastic material are now manufacturing materials in their own rights and not substitutes. The high strength to weight ratio of some plastics offers big field in the coming age of space travels and rockets.
+The same benefits of light weight coupled with good strength and absence of corrosion offer tremendous potential as alternatives to traditional building materials. New shapes in building are absorbing the attention of the architects. Plastics offer many of properties for these designs and their application in exotic structures is an example.
