Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Continuum Mechanics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Like most other Schaum's series, the theory sections are condensed, which makes the part more like a compendium of continuum mechanics. The theoretical sections are thus good for a quick review of the material but not a good resource for "learning" the material. The biggest advantage of the book is that it provides an inexpensive summary of continuum mechanics.

The downside of the book is that the solved problems are not similar to the type of problems one confronts in a typical continuum course. In most cases several problems (statement together with the solution) are presented in a single page, which shows that each problem has been solved in 1-5 lines. I personally don't like most of the problems presented here; however, the problems could be useful for warming up.

A better book is "Introduction to the Mechanics of a Continuous Medium" by Malvern, which is the best I've seen in explaining the intricacies of the theory. Another good complement is Holzapfel's "Nonlinear Solid Mechanics: A Continuum Approach for Engineering", which contains both the theory AND some solved sample problems.

The problems in this book where very helpful to me in my applied continuum mechanics course, but they tended more towards the theoretical side. A good purchase for students and researchers dealing with solid mechanics and mechanics of materials.

Better than most professors, but concepts are still difficult to grasp. Have you ever had one of those tennis ball machines go crazy at you? That is how continuum mechanics is, you constantly have things hurled in your direction and you don't know how to stop them. The concepts are very difficult to understand since I'm sure many professors have a hard time understanding the course material itself. The Schaum's outline helps very much in the sense that it slows down the hurling of material and it explains where many equations are derived from. This book stands out above the rest of continuum mechanics books in the sense that it offers solved problems, which is rare for such a theoretical class.

This is a great text to use as a quick reference for most things continuum mechanics- Mase does a very respectable job at summarizing this beautiful subject. I think this would be a great supplement to a CM course, although the notation strays from what is popular today. The power of this book is that almost everything appears in both indicial notation and Gibbs (boldface) notation. This makes it easy to follow along even if you aren't yet comfortable with the indicial notation. The worked problems are all very brief- they demonstrate in perhaps the simplest manner possible the basics of mechanics. Like every other CM book out there, this one has a few things that are done exceptionally well, and a few things that fall short. I will continue my search for the best CM book in print...

Across 200 some pages, the topics include math prelims; stress; deformation; kinematics; balance laws; linear elasticity; linear fluids; classical plasticity; classical viscoelasticity. The figures are clear and illustrate the points being made. I don't know if I got a bad printing, but the superposed dots used to indicate time derivatives didn't appear in my copy.

This is a good source for supplemental problems and alternate explanations of some of the basic results and concepts in continuum mechanics. I typically recommend it to my students. Information/$ ratio is very high.

This is a great book to support all the information you can get in a single continuum mechanics class. It could be nice if it has a more detailed treatment of the mohr's circle because of his power in 2D and an approach to the analysis of shells and plates.
Best regards and enjoy it!

Not really a very good book on continuum mechanics. However, it
does summarise some very important points and equations useful
for quick reference. The exercise is not so great.

This outline was excellent. The chapters summarize what we went over in class. The worked problems allowed for more practice actually using the theory.