Customer Reviews

Deformation and Fracture Mechanics of Engineering Materials

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book for a one-credit course at Virginia Tech and hardly ever used it. That, I believe, chiefly reflects excellent teaching methodology and not insufficiency of this book.

Back in Switzerland, I took a big, long course in deformation and fracture mechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and all of a sudden this book came in handy for extra illustrations and alternative explanations. While it is particularly excellent when treating fracture and devotes much space to this subject, deformation mechanics are often simplified or contain omissions in the derivation. Unfortunately, my course went into further detail than Dr. Hertzberg's book, so for the interesting details on deformation (e.g. a good explanation of the Lüders Bands) I must search elsewhere.

However, readers will appreciate the last chapter of case studies, which is instructive and sometimes even humorous (though it might require black humor to find a bursting tank of molasses funny).

In short, if you're into things that break, this book will make you happy. If you want to know what happens before, this book will help, but won't by any means be exhaustive.

For a mechanical engineer, this is a good sourcebook. I had to know this for some of my graduate classes, and compared to other books, this was superb. Naturally, to get an in depth look at the subject matter it would require having at least 3-4 other books.

Fracture mechanics in application is simple enough that it can be learned via wikipedia. Understanding it and the physical basis of the derivations - not so easy - but covered well in this great work. Well worth it for an older version.

I am happy with the quality and condition of the book and its pages, but when I received the book it had a plastic, sticky bookcover on it. It makes the book's hardcover look bubbly and used and I would prefer it not be on there, but if I take it off I'm pretty sure it will leave an unwanted residue. Oh well, I guess it will keep the actual cover in a nicer condition should I decide to sell it back later.

It is an interesting and useful book; however it really needs to be updated to be relevant for 2010.

This is a great book. I think I prefer the earlier editions because they are more based on metals

This textbook reads more like an encyclopedia than a normal textbook. The presentation of the material is very thorough and accurate yet assumes a reader more mature in the material. I am using the text in a materials behavior course as a senior in mechanical engineering and many of my classmates have come to similar conclusions. Both my professor for the course and another in the same field also agreed the text is probably better suited as a reference rather than a stand-alone teaching tool. Overall, excellent text but maybe more useful for a more learned reader than I.

Many of the explanations used in the book were well written but a bit hard to understand. Equations jump out of nowhere without any elaboration and the problems asked at the end come with no supplement or explanation in the chapter to help you out. I mostly had to look up the subjects on wikipedia to really get a better understanding of much of the material. Although I acknowledge this to be a book for an upper division class, so I'm not too disappointed overall with it, seeing as how I've already taken the introductory course to material sciences and it was my fault for really forgetting the minor details needed to fully comprehend the subject.