Customer Reviews

Nonlinear Continuum Mechanics for Finite Element Analysis

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

 

 

This is possibly the clearest textbook exposition of the fundamentals of nonlinear mechanics that I have seen. The various finite deformation tensors are developed thoroughly but from initially simple systems in a manner that should be accessible to senior students. These fundamentals are then applied to the increasingly-important class of hyperelastic materials, a fairly recent development in many FE codes but with applications ranging from vehicle tyres, to running shoes to biomedical implants.

Unlike many texts, this book does not attempt to address the whole field of continuum mechanics and, in particular, does not really consider inelasticity or fluids. This helps keep the cost down to a level that students might afford.

An alternative might be Mase's 'Continuum Mechanics' (Shaum's Outline Series), which does not however include the finite element aspects.

This book does a fine job of covering the topic of nonlinear kinematics and uses powerful techniques (push forward, pull back, Lie derivative, etc) to convey kinematics. However, the most important, widely used engineering materials (metals) are summarily ignored until they are covered in a mere ten pages in an appendix. That is, elastoplastic material behavior is barely touched upon. Therefore, things such as descetized kinematics, finite element formulations are virtually worthless to any worker in the field of metals. Only the exceedingly simplistic material behavior known as hyperelastic is covered in detail. As a worker in both mechanical engineering and finite element linear and nonlinear analyses, this book was a great disappointment relative to its usefulness.

This book does well with the principles of finite deformation. From its first few chapters which enter into the preliminaries of finite deformation to its final chapters which transform the theory of finite deformation into a workable finite element code. If you are interested in going from the theory to the finite element code, this book is for you. The book uses a finite deformation (hyperelastic and isotropic) finite element code to teach you all of the subroutines required. The book references a website where you can download the source code. The only major weakness of the book is the fact that the book ultimately assumes an isotropic material to carry the theory forward.

The book is a nice pedagogic introduction to nonlinear elasticity. It lays out the principles clearly supported with good examples, something you won`t be able to find in many other books.
Some previous reviews criticizes the book for not covering anisotropy or plasticity, but the book is simply intended to cover the principles of large deformation elasticity. From that point of view, anisotropy is a case where you have the same formulas but more constants. And plasticity, as the name reveals, is NOT elasticity. There are plenty of plasticity models out there and interested reader should find the proper source for those. Unlike what a previous reviewer says, hyperelasticity is NOT "exceedengly simple", and is a fairly general form of elasticity. It is widely used in many engineering materials and covered in detail in this book.

Good book and gentle introduction to computational and theoretical aspects of nonlinear solid mechanics with large deformation. I downloaded also the code mentioned, and it is great fun playing with it.

This is a very good introductory book to the subject of nonlinear continuum mechanics focusing on finite element applications. It fills the gap existing among different books treating this subject. The approach to Directional Derivative is quite general and very interesting. I would recommend this book for a first course in Nonlinear Continuum Mechanics.

I bought this book for my study during the Phd course I'm doing. It is very good!!

Bonet and Wood have done an excellent job with this book. After motivating what they are trying to do with simple examples of nonlinear mechanics, they move into some basic vector and tensor math. Summation signs are explicitly used, so if you are new to continuum mechanics you don't have to try to learn the ins and outs of the seemingly bizarre notation at the same time as the fundamental concepts (although you really should learn it at some point in time). Once the math is set up, Bonet and Wood move into finite kinematics, the force balance, material constitutive models, and finally, getting all of the above set up in an actual computer code (which is available for download) to do some FEA.

The strong point of the book is how patient the authors are with you. I found the derivations to be very lucid, with most, if not all, of the important steps shown. Bonet and Wood always tie things back to linearizing the nonlinear problem in anticipation for putting it on the computer. The Newton-Raphson procedure, and its various improvements (line search, etc.) are very nicely explained, so it is clear not just what and why but how we go about solving nonlinear mechanics problems. I highly recommend this book for starting to learn continuum mechanics and one way of solving its problems on the computer.

Nota bene: the emphasis is on large-deformation elasticity, which is a good, relatively simple place to start in continuum mechanics. The material models are all eventually taken as isotropic (which is more than just extra constants, as another reviewer pointed out, since then you must use the exponential map). Plasticity is briefly covered, but only the basic J2 model with hardening. Search elsewhere (Simo and Hughes, or Dunne and Petrinic) if you are interested in computational plasticity. Maybe (and hopefully) in the next edition Bonet and Wood will get to those topics.

This is a very good introductory book to the subject of nonlinear continuum mechanics focusing on finite element applications. It fills the gap existing among different books treating this subject. The approach to Directional Derivative is quite general and very interesting. I would recommend this book for a first course in Nonlinear Continuum Mechanics.

Bonet and Wood have written an excellent book. I thank them for
writing such a wonderful book. Every student who wants to learn nonlinear mechanics should have this book. I am saying this because
I am also a student and I know what a student expects from a book.