Selected papers from the International Conference on Smart Materials and Nanotechnology in Engineering (SMN 2007)

Smart materials and related technologies have been drawing an increasing amount of attention from researchers in related fields worldwide. In the past decade, smart materials and structures has been one of the most progressive fields of research. Recently developed materials and devices have been used to address many challenges in aerospace, mechanical, bionics and medical technologies. The progress made in developing advanced materials and devices is impressive and encouraging. The theme of this special section is smart actuators and applications. This is one of the research areas of smart materials and structures that is recognized as an essential aspect of smart technologies. Therefore, we have organized this special section to promote the development of technology as well as international communication in this field. In the section, current progress in the field of smart materials and structures is presented. The papers published cover the most recent research results in the development of several different kinds of smart materials (e.g. fiber-reinforced shape memory polymer composites, electro-rheological fluids, electro-active papers, shape memory alloys etc). In addition, applications of the materials in smart structures are also included. We believe that the papers published in this special section will be found to provide the latest information and will encourage more researchers to make their contribution to this field of research. The eight papers in the special section were selected from the proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Materials and Nanotechnology 2007 (SMN 2007). The conference was held at the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, People's Republic of China (1-4 July 2007). The conference was an effort to integrate smart materials and nanotechnology with applications from bioengineering to photonics, with an emphasis on application in aerospace engineering. It also addressed and predicted novel developments in this research field. The papers were carefully selected to be representative of over 290 contributions presented at the conference. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors for their hard work and excellent contributions. The valuable progress and significant research results in the field of smart materials and applications deserve to be treasured. We would also like to express our gratitude to all the reviewers for their support and suggestions, thus ensuring the quality of the papers and permitting the publication of this special section.