Customer Reviews

Dynamics of Structures (3rd Edition)

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

 

 

If you want to learn the THEORY of structural dynamics, this is not the best book to get. This book does not cover many of the derivations and mathematics that are behind structural dynamics; rather, it gives a brief presentation of the theory and goes directly into earthquake engineering applications. If you want to learn the core fundamentals and theory of structural dynamics, I would highly recommend J.L. Humar's textbook: "Dynamics of Structures." That being said, it IS an excellent textbook for earthquake engineering, and is probably most valuable for practicing structural engineers or for any earthquake engineering course.

The organization and presentation is excellent. It is organized into two main parts: single degree of freedom systems(SDF) and multiple degree of freedom systems(MDF). An in-depth study of SDF systems comes first naturally since MDF systems can be viewed as solving multiple SDF systems. In terms of rigor, many proofs and derivations are provided. These are usually kept separate at the end of various sections within the chapters such that the reader would not get lost in the details. The problems are also wonderful in that they challenge the reader to think critically about the subject. In short, it is a great book for students exposed to dynamics for the first time.

I had the great opportunity of taking my dynamics class with Dr. Chopra. His book is amazing, and you will not find a practicing structural engineer without one of the editions of Dynamics of Structures in their bookshelf!

I'm so happy with the time and product. I definitely buy another product from them. I used and it was fantastic.

This book may be usable as a reference, but it is definitely useless as a textbook. Unfortunately my professor for structural dynamics is not exactly stellar at teaching (nice guy, but useless if you're trying to learn from him). Because of this, I've been doing what I normally do in this situation, which is learn from the textbook. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to learn structural dynamics from this book unless you have a pretty strong background in the subject. There are very few examples, most of which have no relation to the given problems. Chopra also enjoys substituting variables in for long expressions, which is great for shortening things, but not so handy when you're trying to keep track of these new-found variables in an equation while trying to work through problems. All of the equations are also fairly unorganized, which again, if you know what you're doing, they may be easy to pick out, but if you're unfamiliar with them, not so much. I was tempted to give two stars, because there are some answers in the back to give you some hint of whether or not you're doing the right work, but they're in the most unpractical forms ever. Even if you do get a correct answer and would like to check, you'll probably make yourself wrong converting something somewhere, or missing simple math in static condensation, which then leads you to question your original method entirely.

If this is required for a course, I hope you have a good professor. At the very least the material is interesting.

This book should not be used as a textbook. Some of the notations are not clear, and this makes it very confusing if you are studying the subject for the first time. However, if you know the subject, then you can figure out what the author is trying to say. More important of all, a good textbook should use either Newton's second law or the conventional Lagrangian to derive the equations-of-motion (that is systematically straight forward and the students can easily see the best choice of generalized degrees of freedom). In short, I am very disappointed that UC-Berkeley has replaced the classical textbook of Raymond Clough (Dynamics of Structures) by this book of Anil Chopra.

Dynamics of Structures (3rd Edition) (Prentice-Hall International Series in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics)