This text explores the mechanics of solids and statics as well as the strength of materials and elasticity theory. In addition to introducing the fundamentals of structural analysis, it combines and applies important concepts in engineering mechanics. Its many design exercises encourage creative student initiative and systems thinking.
Static equilibrium, force resultants, support conditions, and analysis of determinate planar structures--including beams, trusses, and frames--are among the topics, along with stresses and strains in structural elements, and states of stress such as shear, bending, and torsion. Additional subjects include statically indeterminate systems, displacements and deformations, an introduction to matrix methods, elastic stability, and approximate methods. Suitable for undergraduate and graduate students of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, this text is also relevant to students of architecture. The author trains students to "see the world from the perspective of an engineer responsible for making certain that the structure doesn't fail, that the mechanism doesn't make too much noise, that the bridge doesn't sway in the wind, that the latch latches firmly, or that the landing gear do not collapse upon touchdown."

Designing Engineers describes the evolution of three disparate projects: an x-ray inspection system for airports, a photoprint machine, and a residential photovoltaic energy system. The products of engineering design are everywhere, but who or what determines their form and function? Their surfaces are usually cold, seemingly objective, as if they existed outside of history of the technologies that are so much a part of our lives. Written by a practicing engineer, Designing Engineers yields clues to this mystery by probing deeply into the everyday world of engineering. In doing so, it reveals significant discrepancies between our ideal image of design as an instrumental process and the reality of design as a historically situated social process that is full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Designing Engineers describes the evolution of three disparate projects: an x-ray inspection system for airports, a photoprint machine, and a residential photovoltaic energy system. In each case, we are taken through the hallways and into the meeting rooms of the company to watch over the shoulders of engineers as they engage in the manifold individual and collective work that goes into designing a new product. Louis Bucciarelli was a consultant to one project and participated in the design process for the other two. In all three projects he examines both object - the way participants understood how things work - and process - the way they go about designing. What he learns is that engineering design is a social process that involves constant negotiation among many parties, not just engineers but marketing people, research scientists, accountants, and customers as well. One of the strengths of the book is the way Bucciarelli uses the very language of engineering discourse to uncover the many levels at which negotiation takes place. Designing, it turns out, is as much about agreeing on definitions as it is about producing "hard" artifacts.