Plastics: Engineering Materials

This paper is concerned solely with the engineering characteristics of plastics. A description of the reaction of these materials to the various environmental factors of force, time, temperature, and humidity is presented. The magnitude of the subject requires a generalized treatment, such as that which would be used in a description of the engineering characteristics of metals. The subject of plastics as engineering materials will be developed through a series of comparisons of plastics with the older materials used in civil engineering; a series of comparisons of plastics by generic groups; a selected set of quantitative comparisons with other materials; and, finally, an analysis of certain pertinent design considerations.