Customer Reviews

Handbook of Grid Generation

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I bought the book with great interest because of the type of research I am currently involved in. For me, the book is a disappointment. I have seen two types of technical handbooks. One type is the usual handbook of mathematics (or more specialized in integrals or differential equations). This type gives the basic definitions and well-known facts about the concepts and topics. The other type of handbook is more advanced, covering specialized topics in depth. An example is the Handbook of Numerical Analysis, in which a wide range of topics are covered in depth. The reader (e.g. myself) can LEARN the fundemtals of a particular numerical theory by reading the handbook alone. The handbook under review, however, is of neither types. In some sense it is a compilation of review articles of various grid generation techniques while lacking the depth usually seen in such articles. I can imagine the difficulty in presenting grid generation in a systemtic manner as determined by the nature of the field. I did wish that the book could be something similar to the Numerical Receipes: not systematic but practical and very useful. But this is not the case. The book does contain lots of useful references, which probably justify its cost.

I bought this book in the hope that it would contain actual implementation details concerning the various methods; specifically prismatic and other unstructured methods. To say the least, this book is thick but it is filled with extraneous fluff without any real details. For instance, the chapter on prismatic grid generation is nothing but a lot of "hand-waving" without any concrete details and I can say the same concerning the rest of the book.

Also, it appears that many of the chapters in the book were included without a strict peer-review process as should be the process for a book of this type.

This book is a good collection of papers ranging from structured grid generation to unstructured grids, going through concepts of geometric modeling that are needed in grid generation. Maybe "handbook" in the title may be misleading for those who are not experts in the field and who could interpret it as a "step-by-step guide" to implementation. Nevertheless --I can speak of structured grid generation only being more familiar with this field rather than unstructured grids-- despite the lack of actual algorithms and pseudo-codes, the reader can indeed implement his own structured grid generator if he reads the book with care and does some algebra by hand on his own (good exercise).

I am happy with it. The literature referenced by each author is vast and is a good starting point for further analysis of the methods.