The
primary objective of this fundamental textbook is to expose and educate the
engineering student, who has already taken the basic course in
Statics, on the principles governing the behavior of structures
– in any branch of engineering – and help him or her develop
the ability to perform simple designs. The principles presented
in this book should help the student become skillful in the
three S’s adopted in any design, namely; Strength, Stiffness
and Stability.
The material presented in Mechanics of Materials should be useful to the student for several years beyond
when the course was first taken. The book should be helpful in preparation for different licensure related exams that an engineer is expected to take during her or his career.
In developing this textbook, the authors have focused on the
following features:
- Developing the topics in a sequential and logical manner such that the knowledge of one topic is useful in subsequent chapters. The instructor should not have to jump back and forth in teaching the material.
- For each topic a detailed description of the theoretical material, wherever applicable, is presented in the narrative. Applicable sign conventions are suitably explained.
- The applicable equations are also summarized in each chapter, for ready reference, when the student is attempting the problems.
- Problems have been presented with a dual purpose to help the student understand how to correctly apply the equations and later on to illustrate how the equations are applied in a design context.
- Exposing the student to the two systems of units that are commonly used, namely the SI (Systems International) and the U.S customary units. Derived units, such as stress, that are commonly used in both systems are also outlined in the text and the problems.
- Extensive use of examples to instruct. The authors have observed that students often learn, initially, by seeing how problems are solved as opposed to deriving equations.
- All the examples have been presented in complete detail without skipping any steps or calculations. A logical order to steps is presented for each example, in which the purpose of the step is outlined first. The student can expect to solve most of the problems using a similar step-by-step approach of breaking down the problem.
- The authors believe that a new subject can be learnt by clearly exposing the student to keywords commonly used. The authors have included a set of keywords and their meanings in the summary section of each chapter.
- The summary section of each chapter also contains a set of commonly used equations for that chapter.
