Foundations of solid mechanics (Q1188991)

The book is meant as a textbook for engineering courses or as a reference for engineers. Therefore it primarily presents standard theories with practical importance rather than recent physical results. As the author remarks, it is intended for anyone whose background is an elementary knowledge of differential calculus, scalars and vectors, and Newton's laws of motion. It begins with reviewing the mathematical foundations that will be needed later. Cartesian tensors are introduced carefully, curvilinear coordinates are also mentioned, same as distributions, Bessel functions, and Laplace transforms. The mechanical part is mainly devoted to small deformations. It starts with usual description of stresses and strains. The main part deals with linear elastic materials with many applications in elastostatics, especially for plates. Moreover, linear viscoelasticity is treated in one and three dimensions. A long chapter on waves propagation assembles lots of solutions and applications. The chapter on plasticity is limited to a short introduction to the basic constitutive laws. The book is based on University graduate courses that the author is teaching at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok. Many problems are given which make the book valuable for self-studies.