Principles of solid mechanics (Q2756696)

Solid mechanics is one of the basic courses required for engineering and applied mathematics students. The modern trend is to make a unified presentation of ideas and general principles somewhat common to elastic and plastic behavior of solid materials under the general heading of solid mechanics. In order to help acquire the basic understanding of theory and applications of deformable solids for analysis and design, the author provides a thorough and systematic treatment of solid mechanics. Unlike many other standard books on elasticity, plasticity and continuum mechanics, this textbook is mathematically less rigorous, but fairly sound from engineering point of view. The author makes a serious attempt to provide the engineering student the fundamental concepts and basic applications of sold mechanics (some knowledge of differential equations, vector and tensor analysis are required).NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe book contains twelve chapters, many interesting footnotes and an index. The first three chapters deal with basic theoretical aspects of elasticity and plasticity with special attention to stress-strain relationships. Chapter 4 is devoted to elastic analysis and design of a few classical structures including beams, rings and wedges in two-dimensional configurations. Special attention is also given to the properties of field equations with boundary conditions. Chapters 5 and 6 present the linear stress field, uniform and isotropic stress fields, and two-dimensional solutions for straight and circular beams with Airy's formulation of stress functions in Cartesian and polar coordinates. Several problems including Lame's solution for rings under pressure, small circular holes in plates, tunnels, inclusions, harmonic holes and inverse problems, neutral holes, and rotating disks and rings are discussed with examples in chapter 7. Chapter 8 is concerned with wedges and the half-space under different loadings. St.-Venant's formulation of the torsion problem and Prandtl's stress function are discussed in chapter 9 for different geometric configurations. Chapter 10 is devoted to basic concepts and field equations of linear plasticity with several examples. One-dimensional plasticity for design, plastic bending, limit load of beams, limit analysis of arches, frames and plates, plastic torsion with tension and/or bending are major topics of chapter 11. The last chapter of the book discusses the basic partial differential equations of equilibrium coupled with yield condition, slip-line analysis, solutions for weightless Mohr-Coulomb materials, the general case of Coulomb materials with weight or for nonconstant boundary loads, and an approximate Coulomb mechanism.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThis is an intermediate level textbook for civil, industrial and mechanical engineering undergraduate students who are interested in classical results, methods and applications in solid mechanics. This book provides an interesting introduction to linear elasticity and plasticity. It is fairly well written and has a large number of examples, problems and questions at the end of each chapter. I feel that this book will have some positive impact on both students and teachers of engineering science. However, it could be less suitable and useful for graduate students because of the elementary nature of subject matter and lack of more detailed mathematical treatment. The author mentions many excellent advanced books and treatises which may be more appropriate as graduate level textbooks. In the reviewer's opinion, the following books seem to be more suitable for this purpose: \textit{I. S. Sokolnikoff} [Mathematical theory of elasticity. 2nd ed. Repr. of the 1956 orig. publ. by McGraw-Hill, New York. Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. XI (1983; Zbl 0499.73006)]; \textit{S. P. Timoshenko} and \textit{J. N. Goodier} [Theory of elasticity. 3rd ed. Engineering Societies Monographs. International Student Edition. New York etc.: McGraw-Hill Book Comp.; Tokyo: Kogakusha Company, Ltd. XXIV (1970; Zbl 0266.73008)]; \textit{D. S. Chandrasekharaiah} and \textit{L. Debnath} [Continuum mechanics. Boston, MA: Academic Press. xiv (1994; Zbl 0798.73001)].NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEIn summary, this is an excellent intermediate level textbook for senior undergraduate students of civil and mechanical engineering. The book does not contain any major wrong information or serious error. I would recommend its adoption as an intermediate level book on solid mechanics.