Over the last forty years I have been lucky enough to have experienced a unique career researching and developing composite materials, in both industry and academia, during a time of unprecedented expansion in the global composites business. Over that time, I have been involved in areas as diverse as the development of new and novel fibre and composite products through to fundamental materials research. My research efforts have been focussed in three main areas; the fibre-matrix interface region, fibre reinforcements and in particular glass fibres, and the structure-(re)processing-performance relationships of reinforced thermoplastics. The published output of that work is collected together in this series of volumes.

The 21 papers collected in this volume summarise my research on interface and interphase carried out in the Advanced Composites Group of the University of Strathclyde. Much of the performance of fibre-reinforced polymer composites is defined by the structure and properties of the fibre-matrix interface region in these composites. The study of adhesion in this interface region can be divided into three general question or challenges.
1) How best to measure and characterise the level of adhesion?
2) Understanding what controls, and how to optimise, the level of adhesion.
3) Relating that level of adhesion to macroscopic composite performance.
The research conducted throughout my career has addressed all three of these issues at some point and so the papers is this volume will address aspects in all three of these categories.