Customer Reviews

Mathematical Foundations of Elasticity (Dover Civil and Mechanical Engineering)

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

 

 

Though I'm a engineer in practice I bought this book out of personal interest to further my knowlegde. When I first opened the book I was a taken aback by the amount of mathematics used. Having a good knowledge of the classical theory of elasticity and some non-linear theory is simply not enough to begin with this book. Know your mathemactics! (differential geometry,etc.) Appart form the starting difficulies the book has very much to offer and is well written. I especially liked the "exotic" topics like relativistic elasticity and bifurcation theory of beams and plates. This book is very different compared to the books I used to read on elasticity but I still enjoy it.

Sb. said this book turns 1+1=2 into a nightmare, however I can't agree.
First, this book is not written for engineers. For engineers, there are a dozen of good elasticity books, eg. the classics Fung's "Foundation of solid mechanics". This is not the right book for engineers.
This book deals elasticity within the context of manifold. For these of you who really want to know what a tensor really is, what the real meaning of these 1+1=2, for example C=F'F, in the general settings, this is the right one.
As it is said, knowing elasticity, finite deformation theory, nonelasticity is still not enough to open this book. All you need to know is a lot of differential geometry and tensor calculus. This book also try to build up these notions. Good concurrent books to help you understand are "tensor calculus on manifold" by Bishop et. al, and "the geometry of physics" by Frankel.
Overall, this is a book very hard to penetrate, and only intended for the advanced level. You won't expect to learn any elasticity from this book if you are new to elasticity. I recommend you to return back to this classic when you think you are ready, you will find a whole new world.

Turning simple problem into nightmare. How difficult can an elasticity problem be in engineering? But these guys just have a way to make 1+1=2 looks like the most mysterious problem mankind has ever come across. No wonder everyone hates engineering and physics nowadays.