Structural Analysis Made Easy: A practice book for calculating statically determined systems

Being a professional structural engineer and a passionate blogger in the field of structural engineering, I came across this book very recently. This book addresses the solution to the most common problem that many structural engineering students have in the early phases of their education. All the students know what is a shear force and a bending moment diagram, when it comes to solving the complicated system, everyone gets startled and many of them even fail to solve such problems. But this book tries it's best to explain it to students how they can break apart a bigger complicated system, into small pieces. Once you achieve the equilibrium state in these small sub-systems, then you can put the pieces together to solve the entire thing as one system.I was honestly impressed by the way Jakob has tried to explain how to break a complicated system into small sub-systems and how easy it is to find the solution to any system without writing down long complicated equations but by just following few simple rules that he has laid out. This was achieved by his hard work as an assistant professor, as well as carefully understanding the common problems that every student have while solving these complex system.The book lacks the fundamentals of structural engineering, and this has been pointed out by the author of the book on the first page itself. He warns the reader to proceed after having good fundaments about basic solid mechanics like Shear force and Bending moment. But if you have a good understanding of SF and BM diaphragms and sign conventions and how to solve a simple beam, then you can definitely start using this book to have a strong grasp on Structural Analysis.Remember, this is an exercise book, not a conceptual book. This will help you in achieving faster solutions to complicated problems and once you find a solution, it will intuitively make sense how you got it. It will make you a sharper engineer who can quickly solve the complicated structural systems without using a software.I have enjoyed working through it's problems and I would recommend you to add this book into your library.

The bestest book practice in this world. I learned a lot. Congratulations for autor of this book. I will recommend this books. It's fantastic and greatest!!! You learn a lot in something so complex and hard that it is Structural Analysis. For me the most important thing is that I increase my skills in this area, now I feel more secure and I see it very easy. I will recommend this book.

I bought this to refresh my memory for the pe exam. This needs more visuals to go along with his explanation of his methods. I got very confused trying to visualize what he was trying to say in regards to his tricks. He also changes his sign convention half way through the first example problem so it very hard to follow along. He places the negative values on top of his shear and bending moment diagrams! Who does that?! The practice problems don't come with a solution just an output I can get from any structural analysis software. Waste of time and money.

This book is a must have for undergrad students. It goes straight to the point. The theory is only 37 pages, which is awesome! Expect to spend a great deal of time practicing the examples though.

I have been a licensed civil engineer for many years, however, it has been a while since I had to perform basic structure analysis problems. I thought this book would be a good reminder of the process. He just confused me. He jumped to conclusions without showing how he got there. This book did not help me. Watching Dr. Jeff Hanson videos on Youtube helped me tremendously to figure out what this author was doing. Skip this book and go to the Jeff Hanson videos.

Excellent book for structural engineers

Not worth it. The book has Only two examples and one of them has a typo in the calculation. The “tips and tricks” are obvious general study types like “study in a quiet place” and use a “calculator with good buttons”. There are 50 practice problems, but instead of showing worked out solutions, it’s just an output from structural design software showing the answer. Not what I expected.