Matter

For a professional constructional design, a profound knowledge of the behavior of building materials under different external influences like load, temperature, weather, fire, chemical action, and many others is fundamental. In this respect, materials use to behave in a wide gamut of ways which the constructional designer needs to foresee in order to avoid grave failures which can lead to substantial material, but also human, losses. Most materials can be grouped within major material categories which share a more or less common behaviour, like metals, mineral materials, or organic materials. Their properties can usually be derived from their basic atomic or molecular structure, a basic knowledge of which helps understand the way materials react under the aforementioned influences. For this reason, this chapter includes an overview of the submicroscopic composition of the most important building materials.