Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Mechanical Vibrations

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This Schaum's outline is a better reference and source of examples and problems than it is a stand-alone tutorial. It does a pretty good job of outlining the material and kinds of problems you need to solve in a course on mechanical vibrations, but the explanations fall somewhat short. Also, remember that to understand this material you should already be familiar with matrix algebra, calculus, and both partial and differential equations, as well as your engineering mechanics. The wave equation and even Lagrangian dynamics are mentioned, and you are going to need to already understand those subjects if the problems in this book are going to make any sense. If you want a good cheap textbook on the subject that does a great job of explaining everything, I recommend "Mechanical Vibrations", by Hartog and published by Dover. That book was written many years ago, but it is still better than the expensive newer texts on the subject. In summary, buy Hartog for the explanation, buy this Schaum's outline for practice problems and a quick reference. You'll wind up with two books that comprise a self-contained course on mechanical vibrations for a total cost of less than thirty dollars.

It is an excellent complement for exercising when you have strong theoretical fundamentals. This IS NOT a book for having as a reference for theoretical stuff. The mechanical vibration theory is very well explained on other textbooks like Mechanical Vibrations (Dover Books on Engineering) or Vibration Problems In Engineering, 2nd Edition. The difference lays on that the great number of solved exercises allows you to gain a lot of practice and to reinforce your study on the topic.

Schaum's Outline of Mechanical Vibrations.
A great reference and refresher manual with loads of examples and an easy to read format. All I need now is spare time to really make it work.

For the most part, this was good. I found it was missing vibrating base section, however, it follows well my class text book and explains well the example problems.

An excellent, thorough and comprehensive overview of the subject, with clear, detailed and well organized presentation of vibrations theory and problem solving methodologies. A valuable classic reference asset to any graduate student's or practicing engineer's technical library. Highly recommended for all mechanical engineers.

I raise a hand of praise to these books in general. But, when it comes to Mechanical Vibrations, this guide falls short in some places. While the problems you must solve are of great help, some of the calculated problems and discussions are somewhat misleading (especially if you're rusty on your matrices).