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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brand new product by Oxford Univ Press worth looking at! <1>, May 17, 2005
The first phrase you read when opening the book is "This book is intended primarily for use in a one-quarter or one-semester introductory fluid mechanics course". And it hits the nail on the head. Shaughnessy1 tries to give a balanced introduction to all the tools used for solving FM problems today (analytical, empirical, experimental, computational tools) and succeeds so in the first 70%; the rest is too concise even for a so-called 'introduction'. But how are 1042pages (the thickest FM textbook on the market!) filled if the material doesnt cover as many subjects as other introtexts (FoxMcDonald6) and the last 30% are superficial and shallow? The answer is by picking the fundamentals to pieces. Many pieces. And afterwards blowing them up (~gremlins plus water). You cant reach true depth with this method, but the target readership would not care! If you are a FoxMcDonald6-user, taking a two-quarters course in Fluid Mechanics, and somewhat unhappy with Fox's depiction of the fundamentals because of the little given prose and theory, then a borrowed copy of Shaughnessy1 is among the Top3 choices to relieve you of the pain and shame with your purchased Fox6. Both self-called "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics"-introtexts are marvellous books for total subject beginners to learn from: from Shaughnessy1's prose and CD-ROM, or from Fox6's examples and problems. There is definitely enough to appreciate about our book, so here a representative extract of Pro's:
+ "PartI" broken into many unusual (superbasic) parts: whole chapters devoted to Fluid Properties (Ch02), Flow Visualization (Ch10), Velocity Field (Ch06), Fluid Forces (Ch04) and Case Studies (Ch03), which are usually found combined in other texts, in a "Chapter1 Introduction". Yet, for the novice a rock solid, thorough and welcome introduction to FM ideas! Personally I liked this high degree of picking to pieces very much. Indeed the best part of the book: the first 70% of the book material is highly successful! recommended reading.
+ simple outputs from commercial CFD codes
+ visual icons (CFD, FE-Exam, CD, resources)
+ 644MB multilingual Hybrid CD-ROM stuffed with hundreds of animations and videos, and supplementary reading material, all to be accessed thru a beautiful, modern GUI. very slow application (or is it just my P1? ;-) but the CD content is a top-quality crafted piece of usefulness. Finally a (highly) useful accompanying book CD-ROM! (compare with CDs in Fox6 and FMWhite5 LOL. Cengel1 is accompanied by a DVD, but I dont have a DVD drive sorry). Get a copy of this CD in any case! A former version of it is available separately from Stanford University published by Cambridge University Press.
+ fresh, modern layout; superb, beautifully crafted, helpful 3D-illustrations demonstrating high level of graphics communication skills and mechanical engineering professionalism. serious technical figures (rather than the lavish, non-serious and non-technical 3D-drawings in Cengel1).
+ diverse grey and blue colours and halftones. makes impression of a multi-coloured, expensive book. attractive look, inside and outside. many and superb photographs.
+ tight, unrivalled top quality paper. valuable, pleasant touch&feel guaranteed. you can feel all the money you have spent for this brand new product
+ chapters with *good* examples are Fluid Statics (Ch05), Control Volume Analysis (Ch07), and Flow Visualization (Ch10). comes close to competing texts. good!
+ a whole chapter on fluid forces (Ch04). careful development of stress vector(!) and stress tensor, incl divergence of stress tensor. intro to symbolic tensor algebra and symbolic tensor calculus with use of matrix notation, unit dyads and dyadic products. successful, short chapter!
+ intense treatment of Fluid Statics (Ch05). Maybe not the best, but one of the *finest* I have ever seen. recommended reading!
+ the full chapter on velocity fields (Ch06) includes "General Method to Evaluate a Flux Integral", a careful procedure shown how to calculate any (vector) flux through a closed surface. excellent chapter subsections (as with other chapters!), e.g. on convective transport and then on diffusive transport.
+ practical, helpful text talks to the student, guides him through the subject matter and the solving of problematic situations, and draws attention to hairy points, possible students' sources of errors. all in an integrated flow. i like it, although i like other approaches in a non-integrated, more systematic presentation as well. the main thing is if the author did it *successfully*. And Shaughnessy did!
+ intense treatment of Control Volume Analysis (Ch07). Maybe not the best, but one of the *finest* I have ever seen. recommended reading!
+ end-of-chapter summaries are fine (but the finest are seen in Shames4!), noteworthy.
+ in every chapter explicit use of vectors and vector calculus incl. vector integral equations and vector differential equations. nothing advanced, yet nice to see this kind of stuffz in a Purely-An-Intro text. foolproof calculations, no more errors with signs! vector equations instead of the irritating (scalar) component equations. Lovely. Really lovely.
+ use of cylindrical coordinates almost in every corner. even in tensor matrices.
+ chapter 10 (Elements of Flow Visualization and Flow Structure) is a marvellous broad introduction to basic concepts! much breadth with sufficient depth. explains *separately* in excellent, independent chapter subsections: Eulerian kinematics, Langrangian kinematics, material/path/streak/stream/time lines, velocity gradient tensor, rate of rotation/sheardeformation/expansion/strain tensors, vorticity, circulation, dilation, deformation etc. Supported by maaany useful, nice animations and videos on the CD-ROM.
+ chapter 11 is clear and complete but a rather concise treatment of the "Governing Equations of Fluid Dynamics". Includes also energy equation, cylindrical coordinates, dissipation function, and nondimensionalization, stuff which misses frequently in other introtexts. unfortunately there are not enough examples and problems to illustrate and support the treated, important material.
+ clarity. hard to say whether the monumental length of fundamentals (Ch01-Ch11: 700pages) accounts for breadth or rather its depth because the stuff is all basic, but the author succeeds to present everything in a remarkably clear manner. No sweepiness as in Cengel1's, but all in all crisp clarity in presentation, prose and equations. Contrary to its length! :-O
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