Customer Reviews

Earthquake Dynamics of Structures, a Primer

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After one too many question to the earthquake engineers, they unanimously pointed me toward this short book to get better acquainted with the engineering of structural response to earthquakes.

The book is a paragon of clarity - be sure to get the 2nd edition, it is an improvement over the now-obsolete 1st edition both in inclusion recent developments and in greater description of who did what to get to the state of the art.

I took off one star in annoyance at the completely black-and-white and crude illustrations (although it probably gets extra brownie points from real engineers), which made reading more of a chore, and contributed to the difficulty of reading more than a chapter at a time. To be fair, this book is exemplary in explaining a field rife with approximations, practical considerations, legal ramifications, and a very complex mechanics underpinning.

The next book in an education in this field is the more advanced book by Prof. Chopra, dynamics of structures, in which I've also invested, but haven't cracked open yet.

This book is a summary of basic principles in Recent Earthquake Dynamics of Structures Theory for Linearly Elastic and Inelastic System, Structural Dynamics in Building Design Code and Building Evaluation Guidelines. The details can be founded in Dynamics of Structures: Theory and Applications to Earthquake Engineering by the same author. Very useful informations for practicing earthquake structural engineers.