Continuum Mechanics: Concise Theory and Problems

Concise is an understatement. This book is very dense. Beyond grouping topics into chapters, there is little organizational sense. Each section is a bit of "theory" and then several worked "problems," which aren't really problems...they are more proofs and theory. Not to say that the problems aren't useful. Chadwick covers general continuum mechanics, and takes brief detours into both the solid side and the fluid side, so everyone will get something out of the book. Take note, all you engineers like me: Chadwick lets the physics fall out of the math, as opposed to using math to describe the physics, and in that regard, I find the book very cumbersome. I think this book is best used as a supplement to a course and/or another mechanics book, or a "quick reference" kind of thing. The discussions are too brief to be of use to the initial student of mechanics. Because the apparent emphasis is on conciseness, you need to read very carefully...and flip back and forth to results in other parts of the book. The obligatory "mathematical preliminaries" section of mechanics books is here for precisely that reason- it's obligatory. It's pretty easy to see why this book is fawned over by many mechanicians...if you need to revisit some basic theory or proof as part of some other later work with modern mechanics, this is probably exactly what you're looking for.

As other reviewers have said, not the choice for the first exposure to the material, but really nice reference. It has some nice cute results. Pretty weak in some areas, but it has some unique aspects as well. The direct notation is nice. My three continuum mechanics references of choice at this time would be the books by Malvern, Chadwick, and I Shih Liu, in order of sophistication, which all basically cover the same material but in quite different yet complementary ways.

This book contains all the required theory in compact, though mathematically strict and complete form. About 180 pages, it is a valuable supplement for the study of continuum mechanics.

This "textbook" is really a bare-bones, although reasonably comprehensive, outline of an entry graduate course on continuum mechanics. Many of its 100 or so worked-out "problems" are not really problems as much they are part of larger derivations of theories. If your professor does not specify a required textbook or does not provide lecture notes, buy this book as a supplement. -UC Berkeley graduate mechanical engineering student

I first heard about this book when in engineering graduate school. At the time, this book was out-of-print, so my version came from an almost unreadable nth xerox copy, where n is a very large number. Having had two courses in Continuum Mechanics, I was in a position to appreciate this book. In addition to defining the trace and determinant in the usual way, for example, this book also lucidly presented invariant direct notation definitions. This book contains an excellent derivation of the jump relations that must be satisfied across moving shocks. This book is too disorganized and incomplete to serve as an introductory textbook, but it is fabulous as supplemental reading if you seek new insights on topics you already know.