Continuum Mechanics for Engineers, Third Edition

Book Preface

Preface to the Third Edition

First, a thank you to all the users of the second edition over the past years. We hope that you will find the updates made in the text make it a more valuable introduction for students to continuum mechanics. The changes made in this edition were substantial but we did not change the basic concept of the book. We seek to provide engineering students with a complete, concise introduction to continuum mechanics that is not intimidating.

Just like previous editions, the third edition is an outgrowth of course notes and problems used to teach the topic to senior undergraduate or first year graduate students. The impetus to do the third edition was to expand it into a text suitable for a two quarter graduate course sequence at Cal Poly. This course sequence introduces continuum mechanics and subsequently covers linear elasticity, nonlinear elastcity, and viscoelasticity. At Cal Poly the terminal degree is a masters degree so the combination of these topics is essential.

One of the things that students struggle with in continuum mechanics and subsequent topics is notation. In the third edition, we have made some changes in notation making the book more consistent with modern continuum mechanics literature. Minor additions were made in many places in the text. The chapter on elasticity was rearranged and expanded to give Saint-Venant’s solutions more complete coverage. The extension, torsion, pure bending and flexure subsections give the student a good foundation for posing and solving basic elasticity problems. We have also added some new applications applying continuum mechanics to biological materials in light of their current importance. Finally, a limited amount of material using Matlabr has been introduced in this edition. We did not want to minimize the fundamental principles of continuum mechanics by making the topic seem like it can be mastered by learning mathematical software. Yet at the same time, these tools can provide valuable help allowing one to stay focused on fundamentals.In addition, most current graduate students are quite proficient at using tools such as Matlabr, so we did not feel we had to emphasize that topic.

There are many people to acknowledge in the writing of this edition, and we ask the reader to see the Acknowledgments so these people receive their well deserved recognition.