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Mechanical Engineer's Data Handbook
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Book Review Mechanical Engineer's Data Handbook, James Carvill, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1993, 342 pages, $69.95 Mechanical Engineer's Data Handbook is not what you would expect. You might expect it to be a book chock-full of tables of data, much like CRC's legendary Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Not so; although data tables are scattered throughout the book (tensile strength, elastic modulus, stress concentration factors, thermal conductivities, etc.), bounteous data are not its strong point. So is it merely another specialized technical handbook for the mechanically inclined? A variation on the famous Mark's or Kent's Mechanical Engineering Handbooks? Not exactly. It is really something of its own. On the positive side there is the layout of the material in the book. Carvill has organized his handbook much like an undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. Chapter headings match typical undergraduate course titles: (1) Strength of Materials, (2) Applied Mechanics, (3) Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer, (4) Fluid Mechanics, (5) Manufacturing, (6) Engineering Materials, (7) Engineering Measurements, and (8) General Data (on units, fasteners, symbols, and so forth). The book appears to be more of a compilation of the essentials from a series of basic mechanical engineering textbooks than of topics found useful by practicing mechanical engineers. Consequently, this handbook should be very useful to current engineering students looking for a good reference containing only the important equations of their profession or as a review text for a professional engineering exam (such as the Engineer in Training or Fundamentals of Engineering exam). There are 90 handbook sections and subsections and nearly 20 pages of glossary. There is very little text, mainly equations (probably hundreds) and drawings used to succinctly explain the symbols used in the equations. So it might better be titled a "Mechanical Engineer's Equation Handbook."
Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 1995; 10:152 © Elsevier Science Inc., 1995 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010
On the dark side there is the fact that none of the equations, tables, or figures are numbered in the book, and, more important, no source information is given for the data in any of the tables. This may seem like a small point, but it makes information in the book very difficult to cite properly in engineering logs, technical reports, or published articles or books. In an increasingly litigious society where engineers are being held accountable for their work in a legal context, it makes the book very difficult to market to the active professional who is aware of and sensitive to these limitations. Also, certain British technical terms may be confusing at first to American readers. For example, the use of the terms dryness factor and exergy for the thermodynamic terms quality and availability, the use of molecular weight instead of the more correct molecular mass, calorific value instead of heating value, and so forth. The illustrations are simple blackand-white line drawings (sometimes to a strange scale). However, the lack of illustration color and shading keeps the price down without substantially altering the usefulness of the book. The development and production of a comprehensive handbook of any kind are no easy task. They require meticulous attention to detail with careful and repetitive scrutiny of the manuscript and galley proofs for errors. I am impressed with both the quality and quantity of detail in Carvill's book as well as with the straightforward presentation style. All in all, it is a useful handbook, and I recommend it to mechanical engineering students and practicing engineers alike. ROBERT T. BALMER Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201
0894-1777/95 / $9.50 SSDI 0894-1777(94)00055-D
Book Review Mechanical Engineer's Data Handbook, James Carvill, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1993, 342 pages, $69.95 Mechanical Engineer's Data Handbook is not what you would expect. You might expect it to be a book chock-full of tables of data, much like CRC's legendary Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Not so; although data tables are scattered throughout the book (tensile strength, elastic modulus, stress concentration factors, thermal conductivities, etc.), bounteous data are not its strong point. So is it merely another specialized technical handbook for the mechanically inclined? A variation on the famous Mark's or Kent's Mechanical Engineering Handbooks? Not exactly. It is really something of its own. On the positive side there is the layout of the material in the book. Carvill has organized his handbook much like an undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. Chapter headings match typical undergraduate course titles: (1) Strength of Materials, (2) Applied Mechanics, (3) Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer, (4) Fluid Mechanics, (5) Manufacturing, (6) Engineering Materials, (7) Engineering Measurements, and (8) General Data (on units, fasteners, symbols, and so forth). The book appears to be more of a compilation of the essentials from a series of basic mechanical engineering textbooks than of topics found useful by practicing mechanical engineers. Consequently, this handbook should be very useful to current engineering students looking for a good reference containing only the important equations of their profession or as a review text for a professional engineering exam (such as the Engineer in Training or Fundamentals of Engineering exam). There are 90 handbook sections and subsections and nearly 20 pages of glossary. There is very little text, mainly equations (probably hundreds) and drawings used to succinctly explain the symbols used in the equations. So it might better be titled a "Mechanical Engineer's Equation Handbook."
Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 1995; 10:152 © Elsevier Science Inc., 1995 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010
On the dark side there is the fact that none of the equations, tables, or figures are numbered in the book, and, more important, no source information is given for the data in any of the tables. This may seem like a small point, but it makes information in the book very difficult to cite properly in engineering logs, technical reports, or published articles or books. In an increasingly litigious society where engineers are being held accountable for their work in a legal context, it makes the book very difficult to market to the active professional who is aware of and sensitive to these limitations. Also, certain British technical terms may be confusing at first to American readers. For example, the use of the terms dryness factor and exergy for the thermodynamic terms quality and availability, the use of molecular weight instead of the more correct molecular mass, calorific value instead of heating value, and so forth. The illustrations are simple blackand-white line drawings (sometimes to a strange scale). However, the lack of illustration color and shading keeps the price down without substantially altering the usefulness of the book. The development and production of a comprehensive handbook of any kind are no easy task. They require meticulous attention to detail with careful and repetitive scrutiny of the manuscript and galley proofs for errors. I am impressed with both the quality and quantity of detail in Carvill's book as well as with the straightforward presentation style. All in all, it is a useful handbook, and I recommend it to mechanical engineering students and practicing engineers alike. ROBERT T. BALMER Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201
0894-1777/95 / $9.50 SSDI 0894-1777(94)00055-D