© 2001 by CRC Press LLC
Preface and Acknowledgments
Writing textbooks on topics in the field of
Computer Aided Engineering
(CAE)
indeed has been a very satisfying experience. First, I had the pleasure of being a
coauthor with Prof. Thomas C. Smith of the book
Introduction to Digital Computer
Plotting
by Gordon & Breach in 1973. The book
Elements of Computer-Aided
Design and Manufacturing, CAD/CAM
, was published in 1982 by John Wiley &
Sons. The book
A First Course in Finite Element Analysis
published by Allyn &
Bacon followed in 1986, and
Engineering Drafting and Solid Modeling with Silver-
Screen,
published by CRC Press, appeared in 1993.
Having taught the subjects of computer methods for engineering analysis since
1966, I finally have the courage to organize this textbook out of a large volume of
classroom notes collected over the past 31 years.
The rapid growth of computer technology is difficult for any one to keep pace,
and to make revision of textbooks in the CAE field. However, the computational
methods developed by the pioneers, such as Euler, Gauss, Lagrange, Newton, and
Runge, continue to serve us incredibly effective. These computational algorithms
remain classic, only are now executed with modern computer technology.
As far as the programming languages are concerned,
FORTRAN
has been
dominating the scientific fields for many decades.
BASIC
considered by many to
be too plain and cumbersome while
C
is considered by others to be too sophisticated;
both, however, are gaining popularity and increasingly replacing
FORTRAN
in the
computational community. This is particularly true when
QuickBASIC
was intro-
duced by Microsoft.
MATLAB
and
Mathematica
developed by the MathWorks, Inc. and Wolfram
Research, Inc., respectively both contain a vast collection of files (similar to
FOR-
TRAN
’s library functions) which can perform the often-encountered computational
problems. For implementation, the
MATLAB
and
Mathematica
instructions to be
interactively entered through keyboard are extremely simple. And, it also provides
very easy-to-use graphic output. When students find it too easy to use, they often
become uninterested in learning what are the methods involved. This text is prepared
with
FORTRAN
,
QuickBASIC
,
MATLAB
and
Mathematica
, and more impor-
tantly gives the algorithms involved in the methods. Ample number of sample
problems are solved to demonstrate how the developed programs should be inter-
actively applied. Furthermore, the development of the user-generated supplementary
files is emphasized so that more supporting subprograms can be added to the
MATLAB
m-files and
Mathematica
toolkits. It is a text for self-study as well as
for the need of general references.
Numerous friends, colleagues, and students have assisted in collecting the materials
assembled herein, and they have made a great number of constructive suggestions for
the betterment of this work. To them, I am most grateful. Especially, I would like to