Customer Reviews

Mechanical Vibration

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Palm takes the reader into a systematic exposition of the theory of mechanical vibrations. Showing how this can be understood in terms of the basic physics. He walks through progressively more intricate cases, starting with the simplest of systems with 1 degree of freedom.

The book is positioned as a text for an undergrad course, with numerous problem sets and chapter summaries. Also, he chooses Matlab in order to give numerical methods that can be applied to various problems.

By the way, Palm is also the author of a book on using Matlab, "Introduction to Matlab 7 for Engineers". You might want to also check that out, if you are considering using Matlab as your numerical engine.

In Spring of 2009 I adopted this text (1st edition) as the textbook for a undergraduate mechanical vibrations class. The main reason for adopting this book was because it was and still is the only vibrations textbook that teaches Simulink. The Matlab and Simulink sections were well written and easy to follow. I like Palm's strong Matlab/Simulink emphasis in this text.

As any textbook, the first edition always has some errors/typos. You need to get a copy of the errata from either your instructor in a class or the author himself (Professor William Palm III teaches at University of Rhode Island, you can easily find his email address by a search in Google). Palm also authored several other textbooks such as "System Dynamics", "Control Systems Engineering", and "Modeling, Analysis, and Control of Dynamic Systems".

The text has a strong "system dynamics" and "feedback control" flavor because of the author's background. I found the text dry at times - a lot of theoretical derivations but not a lot of industrial applications or pictures of real-life examples. This text would be easier to follow if the majority of the sections are not as long. The first two chapters are review of dynamics, etc. Real topics on vibration start in the 3rd chapter.

In Spring of 2010 and 2011 I tried some other textbooks, such as Benson Tongue's "Principles of Vibration" and Daniel Inman's "Engineering Vibration" (3rd edition), and used Palm's book as a supplement on teaching students how to use Simulink. This year (2012) I decided to use Palm's book again as the main text. I look forward to improved future versions of this text.