Customer Reviews

Stress, Strain, and Structural Dynamics: An Interactive Handbook of Formulas, Solutions, and MATLAB Toolboxes

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

 

 

Taken by itself, this is a good solid text on its subject matter, both during the learning process and as a later reference for a working engineer (which I am - with 35 years of experience). However, the Matlab "toolbox" is significantly flawed. First, the tools are presented as p-code, not m-scripts, and therefore serve no teaching function whatsoever, and cannot be customized by the user. There is no logical reason for this from a protection standpoint since there is no copy-protection on the disk and thus, at least physically, the files can be just as freely distributed as if they were m-scripts. Even toolboxes purchased from MathWorks generally contain most of their tools as user readable m-scripts. Because they're not user readable, and therefore not verifiable, the Matlab tools on the CD cannot be used in any quality sensitive "real-world" engineering computation. Another toolbox problem is that it is divided into chapter-related folders and tool names are repeated in different folders - requiring in many cases completely incompatible syntax for the different versions - all with the same name. If the wrong syntax is used, the routines fail cryptically, not gracefully. Finally, no help messages are built into the tools (eg. the standard Matlab syntax "help myfunction" does NOT produce any info about the "myfunction" routine - of which there may be as many incompatible versions as there are chapters). This is definitely not standard practice for Matlab toolboxes and is definitely not user friendly. The author's website does not appear - at this writing anyway - to have any updates or corrections for the toolbox routines. So if you purchase this book, do so for the book itself, not the toolboxes which seem so promising in concept.

Updating this review after a year or so, I would reduce the stars to two (if Amazon allowed this) because, due to the flaws in the Matlab tools mentioned above I have not found any real use for the tools in day to day practice.

Unless the author will provide the m files , the book is of very little use. To what avail to see the results if you do not know the solution?
I do not recommend the book!!!

Dr. Yang's newly released book "Stress, Strain and Structural Dynamics" contains a substantial quantity (with 960 pages) of diverse, high-quality material on strength of materials, structural mechanics, dynamics and vibrations, structural dynamics, and two-dimensional elastic continua. The integration of the development of principles, formulas and solutions with Matlab, the high-performance technical computing language, reflects the current state of engineering education, research and development. The accompanying CD-ROM contains nearly 300 self-written functions by the author, which allows the users to not only obtain the solutions but also visualize the responses instantly. Structures covered in the interactive handbook range from simple single degree of freedom system to sophisticated two-dimensional elastic continua. As a result, it is an excellent resource for undergraduate and graduate engineering students, practical engineers and researchers. It deserves a place in all academic and specialist libraries as well as engineering professionals' bookshelves.

In addition, what's nice about this book, as I recently found out, is that the author maintains a website for the book:

http://ame-www.usc.edu/books/yang-sssd/

From this website, one can get a lot of information on what this book is about, how to use the Matlab functions of the book in engineering analysis via carefully selected demo examples, technical supports, updates, and beyond. This, from a reader's viewpoint, really helps amplifying the utilities of the book.

As a researcher and instructor of structural dynamics and vibration courses, I found this book is an excellent reference for professional engineers as well as textbook for engineering students.
This book integrates the central theories of fundamental mechanics (stresses/strains, dynamics, vibration, and vibration control) and practical problem solving techniques including computer applications with Matlab. Explanations and discussions of subjects are concise, yet very clear and accurate. Examples are well-selected to demonstrate underlined principles and problem solving techniques. In addition, numerous illustrations are expertly used to clarify ideas, saving the reader from reading lines and lines of text. This book is also pedagogically well organized with a consistent approach to conclusions from objectives in each chapter.

I strongly recommend this book as a must reference for those who want to become an expert in the areas of structural dynamics and vibration.

This book is an extremely useful tool and really is an excellent handbook on providing information on the fundamentals of strength of materials, structural mechanics, and structural dynamics. Furthermore, the book also provides information on two-dimensional continua that is not commonly found in most engineering handbooks today, as far as I am aware. The accompanying matlab codes allow the user to quickly arrive at the closed form solution to a variety of problems such as simple one-degree of freedom systems all the way up to more complecated two-dimensional continua such as the dynamic characteristics of membranes and plates. In addition, the matlab code lends itself to being advantages to the designer during the research and development phase on a project when a quick solution is required of a variety of conceptual structural configurations. Of particular interest is the associated website maintained by the author that provides supplemental information on the use of the matlab code in engineering analysis demos.

I would recommend this book to those in academia and industry looking to obtain a handbook on the basics of engineering principles that are commonly used in everyday engineering problems.