Engineer's Guide to MATLAB, An (2nd Edition) [Paperback]

Edward B. Magrab (Author), Shapour Azarm (Author), Balakumar Balachandran (Author), James Duncan (Author), Keith Herold (Author), Gregory Walsh (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131454994 | ISBN-13: 978-0131454996 | Publication Date: 2002 | Edition: 2

This authoritative book guides readers in developing a strong working knowledge of MATLAB to solve a wide range of engineering problems. Since solving these problems usually involves writing relatively short, one-time-use programs, the authors demonstrate how to effectively develop such programs in MATLAB–programs that are compact yet readable, easy to debug, and execute fast. Emphasis is on using MATLAB to obtain solutions to several classes of engineering problems, so technical material is presented in summary form only.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The best features of this text are certainly the examples. The combination of the worked examples from the first seven chapters with the detailed material from the applications chapters makes for an applied MATLAB text that is truly unmatched in scope or detail. Together with the easily navigated List of Examples, I challenge a mechanical engineer working in any field to read the text without finding an application that becomes part of their default toolbox, let alone one that simply interests them.” — Adam Ufford, Texas Tech

“I think that this book provides one of the most comprehensive guides to MATLAB for engineering students. One of the major strengths of the book is the wealth of worked-out examples and exercises at the end of every single chapter.” — Luca Lucchese, Oregon State University

“I think that the book is well written and is accessible to both beginners and experienced users alike. The large number of worked-out examples and the clarity of their presentation are certainly among the best features of the book.” — Luca Lucchese, Oregon State University

“The exercises are very good and very relevant. They complement the examples well, making the combination very nice, and a step above other texts in this area.” — David Chopp, Northwestern University

“The authors do a great job in presenting the material in a readable and understandable fashion. They have good examples and good problems. They also do a great job of logically introducing MATLAB functionality and sequentially building on previous concepts. Very good material!” — William Arrasmith, Florida Institute of Technology

“The authors do a great job of integrating nuances of Matlab into their examples. It is also nice to have so many examples supported with the basic theory. It is also good that the authors are attempting a multi-disciplinary (Aeronautical, Mechanical, Electrical, and Civil Engineering) approach.” — William Arrasmith, Florida Institute of Technology

“In this book, you can find numerous programs and examples in a wide range of engineering such as Machine Design, Vibrations, Control Systems, Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, Statistics and Optimization. Those examples are very useful and easy to follow. Good examples in all kinds of engineering fields are one of the reasons that I am in favor of the books among all kinds of MATLAB textbooks.” — Jenny Zhou, Lamar University

“I think this is a very good text book and reference for a mechanical engineering student. It is well written, easy to comprehend. The examples in the book are extremely useful to solve a wide range of engineering problems.” — Jenny Zhou, Lamar University

“To program MATLAB well, one must understand vectorization and user-defined functions. This book stands out in giving well-written, understandable examples.” — Brad Burchett, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

“The quality of the worked examples is truly unique to this textbook. The examples in Chapters 1-7 are stimulating in their content, but simple enough so that the complexity of the application does not intimidate or take away from the educational content. This is often a hard balance to find, but this text succeeds.” — Adam Ufford, Texas Tech

“The quality of the problems surpasses that of any other text. The problems reinforce and test all of the necessary content, but provide a stimulating opportunity to “go beyond” the typical canned responses and apply skills to “real-world” problems.” — Adam Ufford, Texas Tech --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

The primary goal of An Engineer's Guide to MATLAB is to help the reader develop a strong knowledge of MATLAB to solve a wide range of engineering problems. Matrix notation is introduced at the outset and employed consistently in all illustrative scripts and functions to create compact, readable, and efficient MATLAB scripts. There is an emphasis on displaying the results graphically. The book can also be used as a reference for obtaining numerical solutions to a wide range of engineering problems, as a source of applications of a wide variety of MATLAB solution techniques and as a supplement for many engineering courses.

Features

• Emphasizes engineering subjects of practical importance, each of which is introduced by a concise summary of the applicable theoretical results.
• Over 200 worked examples from a very wide range of engineering topics illustrate the various ways to use MATLAB and illustrate important engineering principles and their extensions.
• Numerous illustrations of the Controls, Simulink, Statistics, Optimization and PDE (Partial Differential Equation) toolboxes, including detailed instructions on how to use Simulink to solve control systems and pdetool to solve problems in solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics and heat transfer.
• The chapters applying MATLAB to various engineering subjects were written by experts in their fields.
• Over 175 challenging exercises covering a wide range of engineering topics.
• Extensively classrooms-tested at the sophomore level through the first year graduate level.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 725 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131454994
• ISBN-13: 978-0131454996
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #964,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, numerous practical applications for Matlab, November 11, 2000

By 

Luis Carlos Alvarez (Santo Domingo, D.R.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Engineer's Guide to Matlab (Paperback)

Excellent! ... Applied Engineering using computers, it doesn't get any better than this. Examples, programs, applications .. this is where this book beats the competition. Matlab is a powerful program, and this book shows why. It has been written for beginners and experienced users alike. Introduction to matrices, then goes into functions, and 2D/3D plotting ... then the fun begins with Engineering Applications in fields such as Machine Design, Vibrations, Control Systems, Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer and even Statistics and Optimization! Numerous programs and examples serve as practice for the reader. I am currently using the text to write programs for calculating the vibration of thin beams in my Grad Vibrations class. I only wish I could have gotten my hands on a book such as this when I took many of my undergrad courses. By the way, this book refers to MATLAB 5.3 (Release 11). Congratulations to the authors on such a thorough guide.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great title for mechanical and other engineering fields, November 5, 2001

By 

Keto (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Engineer's Guide to Matlab (Paperback)

Many 'engineering' matlab books don't live up their titles. They are simply written as general introductions to matlab with a few useless thoughts about engineering thrown in.

In my opinion, a good matlab engineering book focuses less on general tips that you could get anywhere, and more on practical problem solving techniques and methodologies that provide insight into a paticular engineering problem and its solution.

This books succeeds in that respect. Though it gives space to the more general issues of using matlab, it gives ample room to specific engineering problems. I found its information and examples very useful. The topics are focused on mechanical engineering fields, such as vibration and control; however, the math used for such topics are used across engineering and science disciplines. Thus, any scientist or engineer will find this book useful.

The book is written so that engineers at many levels can benefit from it. For example, as a former graduate student, I found the treatments of vibration response analysis insightful. However, an undergraduate or otherwise inexperienced user would benefit from this book as well, because there is alot of general discussion of how to effectively and efficiently use matlab and write m-files.

All in all, I found this book excellent for both its treatment of high level engineering analysis issues and its more general matlab tips and discussion.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars hit the bullseye, July 16, 2002

By 

Sarp Kemaloglu (Istanbul, TURKEY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Engineer's Guide to Matlab (Paperback)

This one is really for engineers, it goes over the basics first, subsequently it goes into more details. It has handy examples of mechanics, dynamics...etc. if you are a mechanical or an electrical engineer, and you are a matlab user, this book would mean a lot to you.