Powell (emeritus civil engineering, U. of California-Berkeley) aspires to change how students, practicing engineers, and instructors perceive and teach structural analysis. He says that the reason young civil engineers use computer programs blindly, without understanding what they are doing, is because they were taught that structural analysis can reveal everything they need to know about the behavior of a structure with a high degree of accuracy. In fact it is highly approximate at best, he says, and a useful tool for structural design but is not magic. He focuses on the direct stiffness method of analysis, using physical explanations rather than formal theory or mathematics, and covers both material and geometric non-linearity in considerable detail. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
