Customer Reviews

Dynamics of Structures: Theory and Applications to Earthquake Engineering

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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I've been a seismic engineer for 9 years now. I started my master's degree in Earthquake Engineering back in 1993, in Okayama, Japan.

For the entry exam to the program, my professor recommended me 3 books: Structural Dynamics, by M. Paz, Dynamics of Structures, by Penzien and Clough, and this one. The book by Penzien was too difficult to master in the 3 months that I had for studying, and Paz's tome lacked some in-deep knowledge. Chopra's book was right what I needed for a quick and complete introduction to Dynamics, specially for the short time I had.

All three updated versions of the books reside in my desk's shelf. But everytime that I'm asked by any young engineer in dire need of a quick introduction to this particular field, I heartily recommend this one.

Must keep in mind that the book by Clough is by far the most complete of the three and you'll definetely get more mileage for your hard earned cash, and Paz's book offers a more down-to-earth application of the subject to the seismic design of structures.

Book is well suited for individuals who want to gain some understanding of dynamics as applied to structural systems. However, needs more material on how structural dynamics can be applied to computer applications. Still one of the better books you can buy on this subject.

This book comprehensively covers structural dynamics and extends it to earthquake engineering applications (as claimed by the title). Very readable,easy to follow and has good example problems.

its a great text for an advanced -sr. year or above-class. as a geotechnical engineer, i found it very readable.

Excellent seller, I recommend it 100%. The book arrived very quickly (in 3 weeks to Mexico) in very good condition. thanks.

This book is used for the undergraduate and graduate courses is seismic analysis.

Some of the chapter sections on the more advanced topics are a bit hard to understand (sometimes there's a few steps in math skipped), but mostly it's b/c the topics are not that easy to explain on paper. I'm not a big fan of response spectra myself. It also probably doesn't help that we'd skip segments. I'm sure if you read the book end-to-end, that would make it a bit more understandable. Understand that some of the seismic topics aren't going to be interesting to the common layman unless you are really passionate about analysis.

Overall though, Prof. Chopra does a wonderful job of walking a person through single degree, then multiple degree of freedom systems and how to apply matrix algebra and differential equations to the solutions of basic problems.

It's not one of my favorite books. It's good, but not an especially favorite topic, personally.

Plus I have to give this book an outstanding review b/c Prof. Chopra was the one of the only professors who genuinely cared about his students back in those times at U.C. Berkeley. He always made time for his students and was a joy to just sit and chat with. Alot of effort was put into making this book, and was time well spent.