I really appreciate good engineering books, and this is one of the best I've read. The book covers all aspects of laminiated composite plates, from basic tensor math and anisotropic elasticity, to nonlinear and finite element analysis. The material is presented in a complete and very readible way that makes the subject seem less daunting than other texts I have used.



The text assumes that the reader has a generic engineering-math background: differential equations, vector calculus and some linear algebra. Beyond this basic background, math that is indroduced in the book is well explained, and derivations very complete and easy to follow. I particularly liked the succinct introduction to variational methods used in mechanics. Several laminated plate theories are presented. Also, loads beyond basic stress are mentioned (hygrothermal, electro (piezo), thermal, etc.)



I found this book to be much more approachable than books like, say, Timoshenko's Theory of Plates and Shells.