Customer Reviews

Mathematics Applied to Continuum Mechanics

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

 

 

Dover publications is famous for low price academic books, and this one is no exception. It retails for around $14, so beware of marketplace sellers charging more. The book is good value for the money and goes into great detail about the mathematics. There are also lots of examples (and some but only some even have hints). If I were to *really* factor price into my rating, I'd give it one star more.

The two areas where this book could have been better is (1) It does not explain the physical significance of the things it discusses: this is nitpicking at best coz the book is clearly slanted towards mathematics, not physics. (2) The notation is confusing. This is perhaps the only book in the world which uses U for Airy stress function. In other places, U is displacement, so we are not even consistent. I dislike authors changing notation on us, especially when there's not even a list of symbols page. They assume the book is being read from start to finish, which for an academic book is a lousy assumption to make.

I will point out that I have read this book very selectively: mostly the first 4 chapters (intro, tensors, cfd, elasticity) and part of the variational methods section (which is clearly inferior to Gelfand and Fomin). The section on waves might be stellar but I havent read it at all.

This is my favorite text for continuum mechanics.
It contains derivations not usually covered, and spends a lot of time educating the reader on the tensor notation.
As a plus, it contains a supplement on functional analysis applications, which I still consult above some other texts on the subject.
I have almost no complaints about this text. I cannot suggest it enough.

It's a classic, according to a professor/acquaintance at the University of Washington. Plus, it looks great on my bookshelf. Classy. Smart.