Mechanical Books

A very thoroughly written book. I found some information on all-flying tails that I haven't found any where else. However, Dr. Phillips uses nomenclature that are not what I call traditional nomenclature. Not really a big problem, just different from what I'm use to.

"Mechanics of Flight" will become a classic in the aerodynamicist's library alongside Abbott and Von Doenhoff's "Theory of Wing Sections". Here's why:

* Coverage of topics in aircraft design is exhaustive. From balancing lift and weight for steady flight, on through off axis forces and moments from running propellers, to 6-dof formulas for aircraft dynamic modes, to how propeller location affects aircraft stability, and on and on. Great for both the beginner and the authority in aircraft.

* Often a completely thorough analysis including the minutest effects is presented along with a linearized or simplified method. The simplified analysis is so useful for rapid conceptual design and study of fundamentals, while the detailed analysis gives a complete grasp of the physics and phenomena involved. Plus, in simplifying a complex derivation, the reader is shown which parameters may be safely neglected and which require careful scrutiny, and what is engineering if not intelligently ignoring smaller effects to come up with a reasonable solution to a problem?

* The figures! Well thought out and consistent, the figures clearly illustrate the material.

* Actual aircraft data is used in the example and homework problems. I have a feel for the performance of several classes of aircraft simply from using this book.

* Phillips derives everything, and I mean everything using the fundamental laws of physics as the starting point. A student would be very well served to go through these derivations themselves. Phillips basically shows the student how to learn and how to think mathematically. No shortcuts here. I wish I had learned these things very early on in my own schooling.

* Phillips has included experimental data along with rigorous analytical derivation and computer numerical analysis. I believe that all three are necessary for a true understanding of fluid dynamics.

The bottom line: Buy and use this book! While it is true that the material is focused on subsonic flight, I work for a large airframer of supersonic aircraft and I find the principles and fundamentals to be extremely useful in my work. Whether you are a student or a professional, if you have an interest in aerodynamics this is THE book to use.

This book lays out the concepts of aircraft performance and simulation in an exceptionally clear and easy to follow format. There is no wondering how the concepts in each chapter fit together and how they apply to aircraft design or analysis.

The formulations for aircraft performance are very robust and provide the reader/student with the formulation of each equation from basic priciples in an easy to understand style.

A highlight of the book are the chapters on flight simulation and dynamic stability. The methods presented for 6-dof dynamic stability and quaternion based flight simulation are clearly explained and the examples provided walk the reader through the process of implementing them. These methods are also faster and more accurate than similar methods I have seen used here at NAVAIR, and implement them every time I can into older codes.

This book covers every aspect of flight mechanics that the beginning and intermediate student needs to know and does not confuse the reader!!

This text provides unparalled detail in it's discussion of flight mechanics. It contains clear and concise derivations of underlying equations and has well planned figures and example problems. Subject matter includes static and dynamic stability, propulsion, lifting line theory, 6-dof flight simulation with quaternions, along with many other essential topics. I particularly appreciated the straightforward way in which Phillips applies numerical methods to solving many of the problems. The equations required are located in such a manner as to make it easy to find what you need. Though mainly geared toward subsonic flight, I have found the understanding gained through this book invaluable in the design of supersonic vehicles. This is a great book for students learning the subject for the first time and a must have for engineering professionals and aircraft enthusiasts.

I am an Aerospace engineer working for the Air Force. While attending the annual AIAA aerospace convention in Reno Nevada, I met a professor from Denmark who raved about the work and research of a professor local to the west, Phillips. This seasoned scholar from Denmark wouldn't miss a session if he found Phillips' name appearing in it. I picked up the "Mechanics of Flight" which was on display for the first time at that conference. Due to the mountain of topics covered (900+ pages) I can't say that I have read every line of that book but the material I studied was impressive. I've never seen such complete derivations right from F=MA. The explanations are meticulous and thorough. I coded a real-time 6-DOF flight simulator for a midsized RCAV using this book as the main reference. I've never seen such a straightforward explanation of Quaternion algebra. If there were a "bible" of flight mechanics and dynamics, I would certainly give this my vote over any other in its class.

Finally a book that is not dumbed down excessively. The book is highly technical for an average non engineering type to read, but it's about as simple as it can truly be given its goal, which is structural analysis. If you are interested in a book talking about beautiful masonry, and the inspirations and motivations of the builders, this is NOT your book. It is a engineering look at the state of many of these structures and how the designers accounted for stresses due to wind loadings, foundation settling, and the tensile, shear, and compressive forces inherent in building by using geometric rules handed down since Vitruvius. Heymen also explains while building using geometry works for stone and how all of the above stresses and forces were contained within the masonry ensuring its long term stability. He also explains how modern engineers are working to ensure these structures continue to stand. If you are an engineering student interested in history and historical buildings this book is a must have.

The book explains the design of massive masonry structures in simple, yet highly accurate, terms. It presents knowledge for the design of masonry structures that is even invaluable to practicing engineers.

Jacques Heyman's text is without doubt one of the most interesting books I've read in the last couple of years. I became interested in gothic architecture after seeing my first gothic structure in person, the St. Eustache church in the Les Halles area of Paris, in 2001, and hearkening back to my undergraduate engineering mechanics classes, my "find" in central Paris that day drove me to more fully explore the structural operation of this style of architecture. I started by identifying and visiting the principal gothic structures in France (with the help of such great books as Stan Parry's introduction to gothic architecture), then to identify the key architectural elements common in all these structures, and finally to researching the historical development of the style all the way from Suger's St. Denis to the emergence of the Renaissance. But all this left me with some unanswered questions. How do simple forms, such as the pointed arch, the flying buttress, and the barrel vault, actually operate? Why would such forms remain standing up, even when, in some cases, surrounding parts of the building had been destroyed in times of war, or perhaps by stone-robbing to build other structures (for example, structures at Ourscamp, Soissons, and Caen)? For that matter, why even use features such as the flying buttress, when other, simpler forms would suffice?

The Stone Skeleton thoroughly answers these questions, not from an aesthetic or historical view, but from an engineering view, where geometry, stereometry, thrusts, force vectors, the pull of gravity, and the physical properties of concrete and stone are the principal actors of interest. Although it is true that the book does investigate the subject through the lens of engineering (this is the books forte, and why it is such an invaluable addition to the subject), and the volume occupies itself at length with the examination of forces present in concrete and stone structures, most anyone with a moderate mathematical background and the patience to re-read a paragraph until the concepts become clear can profit from this text. In my mind, it is a missing link in the immense genre of gothic architecture texts.

I picture this text to have two related, but nevertheless discrete, audiences. The first is the one described above, the person who is interested in gothic architecture as an historical and aesthetic art phenomenon, and wishes to develop a greater understanding of the structural factors behind such structures. With a little work and patience, the text more than fulfils this need. But the second audience is the actual engineering student or in-practice engineer who wishes to develop a more sophisticated knowledge of the mechanics of concrete and stone structures. In this sense, I could easily see this work used as the textbook for an entire undergraduate or master's level course, or perhaps as a text for a directed independent study, where the end result is a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of stone structures and the actual operation of the architectural devices present in gothic structures (barrel vaults, groin vaults, domes, arches, pointed arches, piers, flying buttresses, pinnacles, and so on).

I remember at some point in my gothic investigations I came up with a nagging question: why is the lower side of a flying buttress curved? Why not just lay a straight, diagonal beam from the outer wall of the building to the outer buttress pier? Was the curve added for aesthetics? Or was there some important design principle at play? Eager to find the answer and certain that this little fact would be easily discovered, I turned to my mini-library of gothic, only to be repeatedly disappointed (often, tantalizingly so, with texts that ALMOST addressed the question). The answer finally came in Heyman's text, along with many such similar questions. If you, too, are interested in such questions, this book is for you.

this work covers quite thouroughly the mathematics and mechanics of arches. It spends particular time on construction in the Gothic cathedrals including the barrel vault, cross vault, dome, and flying butress. It is beautifully illustrated and it presents the basic concepts as well as giving a quite extenisive theoretical analysis. A good book for anyone familiar with masonry and an essential for anyone involved in repairing and maintaining Cathedrals and other large stone structures.

There's no doubting this is an authoratative book. It's based on an article that first appeared in a professional journal, and I feel that is its real audience. I found myself in trouble shortly after the introduction, despite a couple of mechanics courses in graduate school. You may have better luck, but I think only practicing structural engineers will be able to enjoy this book.

As an aerospace engineer I consider this book an absolute must have. This book is usable as a reference work but also as a academic course textbook. It is extremely complete: From vector and quaternion kinematics to rigid body dynamics to static stability analysis. From basic aerodynamics to the derivation of aircraft force and moment coefficients. From state space models to robust output feedback design. Summarizing: Aircraft Control and Simulation covers the complete track from basic dynamics to a fully functional flight simulator. When you need a graduate level text on simulation and control theory that can also serve as a reference work you should look no further!

As an engineering student, I like the design of this book, 1st. And the contents are also pretty nice, so far. The complete review, however, should be done after reading the last page, I think.

Used this book as a reference book for a UAV Guidance and Control class. Worked well, but there is a revised and updated version.

This book is not meant to cover Flight Mechanics neither to discussing Aircraft Equations of Motion.
This book is really focused in aircraft flight simulation (not aircraft systems simulation) and aircraft flight controls.
This is really the most complete reference concerning flight control laws for all flight phases. The authors make extensive use of Modern Control in State Space formulation. Very few topics use Classical Control.
The text is undoubtedly a very good starting point for any engineer involved in flight controls and flight control laws design for new aircraft concepts, although, some more dedicated discussions are missing on some topics related to the newest technologies such as Fly-By-Wire, Power-By-Wire, Side stick use versus Flight Handling Qualities, Robust Control and Predictive Controls.
This book is a MUST for any flight controls engineer in introductory level. However, attention, you will need to take classes to go through this book. The authors do not delay the text flow to discuss minor details or lengthy mathematical derivations; they simply jump to the right point. Thus, this is very difficult to go through the whole content without help of an experienced Professor.

The chief virtue is its clarity. I've worked directly in this field since 1986, and wish I'd picked up the 1st edition in 1992 rather than finding the 2nd edition in 2006. Most of the material I've picked up through coursework and on-the-job training, but this book presents a thorough, practical and understandable development of each aspect of aircraft control and simulation. In addition, the 1st chapter provides the basis for incorporating oblate, rotating Earth equations into gravitational and kinematics modeling, which is the reason I bought the book.

Roughly, the book covers:
* Kinematics and Dynamics
* Quaternions
* Properties of Aircraft
* Simulation, Trim, Linearization
* Linear Analysis
-- State Space Models
-- Transfer Functions
-- Frequency Response
* Handling Qualities
* Stability Augmentation
* Autopilots
* Linear Quadratic Regulator
* Model Following Design
* Multivariable Frequency Domain Analysis
* Observers and the Kalman Filter
* Discrete (Digital) Control

NOTE: The 1st chapter of the 2nd Edition is substantially enhanced vs. the 1st chapter of the 1st Edition. Several practical needs are now covered in better detail. Quaternion math is added. An algorithm for converting from Earth-centered Inertial coordinates to Geodetic Latitude and Altitude for an oblate Earth model is now provided. If a flat Earth model is ok to use, the 1st Edition is a very good aircraft controls book. If a rotating oblate Earth model is also required, only the 2nd Edition will do.

I have hundreds of books and manuals on various techie subjects and Ellen's AutoCAD 2004 Bible ranks high on my list for books worth the purchase. I have used AutoCAD for years but after moving up to Acad 2005 from Acad 2000 I thought I could use some tutoring. The book didn't disappoint. For nearly every topic there is a step by step, hands-on, example that the reader can perform. There are around 160 drawing files on the accompanying CD; one for each example in the book. You can open that file in Acad and follow the steps in the book and experiment to your heart's content.

All in all, this book won't disappont you like some I could mention.

I have had R14, 2000 AutoCAD Bibles on my shelf for many years now. I picked the 2004 Bible to use as a textbook in an advanced AutoCAD class that I teach 6 or so times a year.

I was very pleased with how well it meshed with the way I have always taught this class (13 years last month.) Plus it is a nice "value added" item that the students can take back to work. My first class was very pleased about getting to use the 2004 Bible while in class and also about having a reference to study after the class.

It was funny because I started saying "take your Bibles and turn to page ..." it was like we were in church! I can not say enough good about Ellen's writing style, her use of graphics throughout the book and her expertise! It is all there in the Bible.

I bought this to get refreshed in Autocad for a new job and would recommend it to anyone. I can't do without it.

A marvellous and first class, well written and referenced, extremely clear and as if having an AutoCAD instructer sitting next to you. I was a new user to this product and I feel today very comfortable to do my tasks on AutoCAD and feel that this book will be a good guide even for advanced users. Thanks to Ellen Finklestien and I laud your efforts and higly recomment the book to all.

I have read various book of autocad, but they all seem very complicated and dificuolt to understand. I found this bible and let me tell you that is the best book I have ever seem. I recomended to a friend of mine who wants to learn autocad. This book will challenge you as a beguiner, intermedite or advance user. It has lots of examples and this author know what she is talking about. Believe me this one of the best if not the best autocad book I have seem in the market in my 10 years of autocard experience.

Fantastic book by legend Frank Berto. Super detailed and fascinating history of all derailleur systems. Definitely worth the price!

Frank Berto's 'The Dancing Chain' is a fascinating, exhaustively-researched look at the evolution of the bicycle. Starting with the high- wheeled bikes of Victorian times, the author shows how the development of the multi-geared drivetrain made the bicycle more versatile & practical for everyday use. Most interesting to me is that many modern "innovations" (indexed shifting, epicyclic hubs, auto-shifting)were actually in use nearly 100 years ago! Lavishly illustrated (including many line drawings by the famed Daniel Rebour), the book also covers how these changes affected the evolution of bicycle racing & touring. Highly reccomended!

I am very glad I purchased this book. This book involves much more about the history of bicycles than the title may lead you to believe.

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, The Dancing Chain is the in-depth story of the history and development of the Derailleur Bicycle. The Dancing Chain offers the culmination of 10 years of research - 5 poured into the first edition, and now another 5 into the second, and focuses especially upon the past 100 years. Black-and-white photographs and illustrations reveal how bicycles adapted to the challenges of traveling faster on level ground and climbing better uphill. The Dancing Chain does not shy from technical detail, yet remains informatively accessible to the lay reader making it a fascinating resource for leisure reading, as well as hard research for academia. Highly recommended for bicycle enthusiasts and historians alike.

The Dancing Chain by Frank Berto dvanhook 06/18/01 01:48 pm EDT rating:

An invaluable reference document for vintage bicycle enthusiasts! It is well and thoroughly researched and fully illustrated with photographs and beautiful line drawings of bicycles and bicycle parts as they have developed over the past one hundred years. It also contains a many helpful and interesting graphs and charts. This beautiful book is as complete and authoritative as is possible, but is very readable even for those with no technical background. It is certain to become a collectors item and was published as a very limited edition.

I am so happy with this selection. The designs stitch out very nicely. I am glad I saw someone with this and ordered it for myself.

As expected the Donna Dewberry designs embroidered as well as your painted designs - I am very pleased with this first set of designs and look forward to more from her in the future.

I love this book and have truly enjoyed using the embroidery designs. They sew up beautifully and will be a wonderful addition to my embroidery library.

This is a lovely book both for the beginner as well as the experienced machine embroiderer. It is not a large book, but nevertheless is chock full of information. There are great ideas for using the embroideries on the enclosed cd, as well as providing inspiration for substituting one's own favorite designs. I used the "Pansies" design in creating an envelope pillow for a friend, coordinating the thread colors with the pansy tapestry fabric used in the pillow body. It turned out absolutely beautiful - the design stitched out gorgeous - much nicer even than the illustration in the book. I would recommend this book to anyone.

I was well pleased with not only the content of the book, the shape the book was in when received. I see great potential for utilization of these designs. Would recommend to any machine embroiderer that this type design appeals too.

This is a straightforward and understandable text on engineering mathematics. It talks to the student and tries to anticipate his difficulties. The authors lead the student by the hand and the examples are solved step by step. The beginning student will have no difficulty with this book. An advanced student may find this book a bit too elementary. It is a good book to study engineering mathematics if you are new to it.

I was searching for a math text with practice problems and this item is the most comprehensive that I've found so far! It covers everything from algebra to calculus to ordinary differential equations. I also like the clean format. There's an accompanying cd-rom but I haven't played with it yet. Overall a great book!!!

That's the book I use in my remedial math class because, contentwise, it's comprehensive and well organised.
Its programmatic approach is very similar to the Kumon system: you have to master each frame before you can move onto the next, and complex topics are broken down to manageable chunks. The foundation topics (part I) roughly correspond to the maths skills a pupil should have mastered by the end of 6th form/grade 12.
I would also recommend it to homeschooling parents who need to brush up on their maths skills and for their children too, because the prerequisites needed are fairly low; one should need only basic arithmetic and geometry in order to get the most of this book, as well as pupils preparing for their GCSE/AS/A level Maths.
It's one of the best maths self teaching book one can find, but be aware it doesn't contain anything about abstract algebra, it's purely engineering maths.

I would generally give this 5 stars and agree with the bulk of the reviews that merit its breadth and approach to teaching and referencing maths. But I give it 4 stars because, in comparison with other math books of roughly the same intent, it comes out being rather bulky. This may be necessary as the one reviewer mentioned that he was able to cut through allot of statistics material by referencing the processes in this book. So, yea, compared to taking up a book on each subject matter, this book probably still needs the bulk, but if you want to cut through to even a more succinct explanation and forgo the process examples then there are better or equally qualified books around, such as Engineering Mathematics with Bird (5th ed). As mentioned in that review, I still keep both around, just tend to refer to Bird more. But if the evolution of a concept isn't automatically registering then I kick it back to Stroud.

I was struggling through a statistics class at school, with a book that was nearly all words and very little in the way of specific mathematical examples. The author of that statistics book would spend several pages talking about an equation and then just glance over the example of it, or only show a very simplistic example, forcing you to figure out how to apply it in more complicated circumstances by yourself. Maybe it works for some people, but I learn by doing math, not by reading about it.

When I saw this book at my school's engineering department, I flipped through and saw the statistics section. About 70 pages of plain and simple math, with only a few very short paragraphs here and there to define or explain the concepts. It was exactly what I needed, so when I got home I went directly to amazon and ordered it. I figured it would turn out to be a good companion to my statistics text, but it was my stats book that was the companion to this book instead!

The rest of the book follows the same format, and covers a huge amount of content. I plan on keeping this book on my shelf to refer to whenever I need assistance in anything math-related.

This book is a good one on metallurgy. It's loaded as it taps into several references. It's discourse is simple to the beginner and a good summary to the pro. I see it on the shelves of some academics I visit.

If you are a Mechanical, Materials, or Industrial Engineer, you will need this book somewhere down the road. I am currently in graduate studies, and virtually every professor in those three faculties has a well used copy. It is well written and very complete. I shopped around looking for a used copy, but most of them are used so often they're almost worn out.

Good Undergraduate metallurgy books are hard to find, this one's an essential for any forging class and any metallurgist's bookshelf.

Este es un excelente libro que incluye la teoria basica de mecanica asi como un resumen de la teoria de dislocaciones esto como una introduccion a los procesos de deformacion. Excelente libro....

Metallurgy is one of the oldest established branches of materials science, and science in general. Yet many of the underlying principles, such as dislocation theory and plasticity, have only been explored within the last 100 years or so. As such, there is a wealth of information in metallurgy that one could learn. This book by G. Dieter is one of the better books to use to learn about metallurgy. Coming in at 800 pages even, this book is a thorough study of the principles behind mechanical metallurgy and is appropriate for both students in the field and practicing engineers. The book provides complete mathematical treatments of numerous subjects within mechanical metallurgy, including crystallography of defects, thermodynamics of plastic flow, kinetics, etc... The book is somewhat old-fashioned in that it leaves out more modern topics such as the use of computer simulations in metallurgy. Because of this, the book does not deserve 5 stars. But due to its breadth and coverage of other topics, it deserves 4 out of 5 stars.

The book is useful for those who begin studying CFD methods in heat transfer and fluid flows. It has been a standard for several years.

This book is a wonderful way to understand the fundamental concepts behind techniques such as the SIMPLE algorithm. Patankar begins in one dimension, expands his approach, and presents the results very clearly. His physical insights are very well presented, and his narrative style is easy to read. One may much more profitably read the recent literature in this area after having examined Patankar's text.

This is the best CFD book I ever read !! And it should be your first CFD book too. It's easy, short, concise and correct.

It doesn't have extensive coverage or any advanced topic like most of recent CFD book get. But the way it shines is that the author (one of the founders of recent CFD field) spent that much time discussing how to discritizing and evaluating the simplest form of commonly used pde eqations and boundary conditions. No advanced math involved, it's all simple algebra.

Everytime when I start a new problem and write down the discritized eqation, I double checked it using what I learned from the book before I input it into the computer. It just worked.

There's no magic in CFD, but this book is like a magic to me.

This is extraordinarily well-written for anyone who knows a little bit about heat transfer, mass transfer, or fluid flow and wants to write a mathematical model to perform calculations in 1D, 2D or 3D. (Also works for electromagnetic equations of the same form--used it for my doctoral thesis.) It's very practically oriented, with clear explanations and good diagrams showing how the grid layout translates into code.

This is one of the ground breaking texts. I purchased a copy on the recommendation of a collegue (who has worked in the field for a while) when I started in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

I found the book a little bit difficult to get into. Having spent more time working through CFD problems, it all now makes sense - although I would recommend beginners to find something else more recent (such as An introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics: The finite volume method by Versteeg & Malalasekera) that has some of the more recent developments in the field.

It is still an invaluable reference to have on your bookshelf as it covers the fundamentals of CFD.

As all colleges do, we offer adult evening classes on programs which our advisory board recommends. This semester, we offered our first evening SolidWorks CSWA Certification program. To my surprise, the class was filled in four days with 20 students, some from industry, and some from our engineering program.

I use the SolidWorks CSWA Certification Guide in class. The book is a comprehensive review and practice package for the certification. Every chapter focuses your study and tests your knowledge of the subject through specially designed assessment exercises. What is especially great about this book is that it includes self study sections with the initial and final models.

For anybody starting to prepare for the CSWA exam, this is the book you should be looking at.

Very imformative I learnt something the first time I opened the book, recommend to all.

I enjoy the modeling techniques presented in the book which I did not encounter in my Solidworks training; it is always a good practice to learn for any software from different prospective. So this book does not only prepare you to the exam it also teaches you the most effective and smartest modeling techniques.

I pass the exam with 80% mark, but be careful guys, the parts in the exam was NOT easy.

I've been using Engineering Design with SolidWorks by Planchard and Planchard in my classroom for the past few years. In my opinion, this is one of the finest SolidWorks books on the market today. As an instructor, I can appreciate when an author/s writes a brilliant user friendly book with clear step by step procedures and illustrations to educate the student. This makes my life in the classroom a lot easier....

This fall, my students requested to take the CSWA Certification exam. I had my students purchase this book which we used for the exam preparation. The students enjoyed the book immensely. The book is focused on the exam, by key categories with many examples and exercises. I would not recommend this book for anyone who does not have at least six to eight months of SolidWorks knowledge. The CSWA exam is not an easy exam, but like any industry certification, it provides a tangible measurement to the skill sets of the student in 3D CAD. Well done.

This is a great book for SolidWorks users. I learned many new techniques going though the exersizes. In spite of four years of industrial exprience using SolidWorks, I would have failed the CSWA exam without this book, becasue many of the modleing methods on the test are not used in my industry.