Best material science books according to redditors

We found 80 Reddit comments discussing the best material science books. We ranked the 46 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Materials Science:

u/[deleted] · 12 pointsr/CFD

>I'm not sure what kinds of other heavy scientific computing you've done, but CFD is a very difficult field and takes years to understand.

CFD isn't this difficult.

On one side you have partial differential equations (PDEs) describing fluid flow. On the other side you have numerical methods used to solve those PDEs. Put the two together, implement it in code, and you get a rudimentary CFD simulation. For CS students, who typically already have knowledge of numerical methods, coding one of these basic simulations can be done within a semester's worth of focused effort. Venturing into finer, more complex domains and trying to model more advanced flow phenomenons do indeed require years of study, but a beginner -- a 3rd year CS undergrad of all people -- has no need to deal with that stuff when all they want to accomplish is to get their feet wet with the inner workings of the simplest CFD simulation.

So let's not intimidate the poor kid and not oversell the profession. A lot of people love pretending like this stuff is black magic, presumably because it promotes job security, but it just isn't. There are lots of people doing CFD that come from CS and Applied Math backgrounds instead of Engineering or Physics. They all started somewhere. So can the OP.

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@ /u/AnotherBrownBike

Khan Academy Physics, Fluid Dynamics lectures are your best friend in this.

I would recommend that you start with getting a decent physical understanding of incompressible (also called divergence-free) advection-diffusion equation. This is a simple PDE that describes how particles (or other quantities like energy) are transferred inside a physical system due to the process of diffusion and advection (aka convection). Solving this equation using a numerical solution method for PDEs (such as finite volume or finite element) will allow you to practice the fundamental underpinnings of a CFD code.

Finite Volume methods are more popular in CFD than finite element methods, because they're mathematically easier for people who have a robust understanding of fluid mechanics. That's not going to be the case for you, because you're not studying fluids academically. I would recommend that you focus on finite element methods instead. These are mathematically more challenging -- using them with fluid PDEs require stabilization terms (like SUPG or GLS) to prevent the solution from oscillating. However, the application of finite element methods to fluid PDEs require essentially no knowledge of the physics behind the PDE. It's pure mathematics, and you as a CS student should be well equipped to handle this.

If you're not familiar with finite element methods for solving PDEs, I would strongly recommend starting with a Python library called FEniCS. This is a brilliant finite element solver that allows you to input the bilinear form of your partial differential equation (Google what "bilinear form" is for finite element methods) in Python and generate a solution. This will allow you to practice the mathematics of finite element methods without getting tangled up in the code implementation of the solution process. Solve the Poisson equation first, and then the advection-diffusion.

Simple solvers you might like working with:

EasyCFD -- Educational program intended to teach the basics of a "black-box" CFD solver.

CFD Python -- A Python program designed with a 12-step lesson plan to solving Navier-Stokes equations.

PyFR -- Another Python-based flow solver. Documentation is a bit sparse, so you need an understanding of how CFD works to use it. But once you have that, PyFR's open-source nature allows you to break apart an actual full CFD solver and look at its components before trying to write your own.

Useful literature you might want to check out from your campus library:

White, Fluid Mechanics and/or Cengel and Cimbala, Fluid Mechanics -- Basically the two beginner level fluid mechanics bibles, depending on who you ask. An overwhelming number of engineers out there have had one or the other as their textbook in school. They're both fantastic. Flip a coin.

Moin, Fundamentals of Engineering Numerical Analysis -- Yet another undergraduate bible, this time on numerical methods commonly used by engineers (of all types). It covers material so crucial in all scientific computing that one of my doctoral qualification examiners specifically requested that I know this book from cover to cover.

Anderson, Computational Fluid Dynamics -- Superb introductory book that covers most everything related to CFD. If you're going to buy anything in this list, buy this one.

Hughes, Finite Element Methods -- The bible on finite element methods. The book focuses on structural applications (which do not require stabilization terms) but the mathematics involved are identical regardless of the physics behind the PDE, so this is still a very useful reference.

Zienkiewicz, Taylor and Nithiarasu, Finite Element Method for Fluid Dynamics -- Great supplement to Hughes' book for anyone using FEM on fluid flow. Covers stabilized methods, starting with easy equations (like advection-diffusion) and scaling up all the way to turbulent flows (which you shouldn't bother with right now).

Anderson, Fundamentals of Aerodynamics -- Just putting this down in case you ever need to specifically learn about aerodynamic applications of fluid flow.

Anderson, Introduction to Flight -- Used nationwide as an introductory aerospace engineering book. I recommend it to everybody outside of the industry who wants to work/study in it. Superfluously covers every aspect of the discipline, from structures to propulsion, from aerodynamics to flight control, from aviation to space.

Panton, Incompressible Flow -- Often used as a graduate level book on theoretical fluid mechanics. Focused mathematical approach. Not an easy read, required some prerequisite knowledge of fluid flow (overview of the fundamentals is very brief), but it's the next logical step up when you're ready to take your fluid work further.

u/pisosimple · 11 pointsr/CFD

If you're looking to get started, you should start with a good book like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Fluid-Dynamics-John-Anderson/dp/0070016852

That book starts out with the basics of Fluid Dynamics equations and is really very good.

Turbulence theory and turbulence modeling is a pretty advanced topic. You will first have to learn about laminar boundary layers, boundary layer equations and then about transition to turbulence, turbulent boundary layers and turbulence modeling.

This is the best book I have read on Boundary Layer theory that covers both laminar and turbulent flow:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/3540662707/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1425473580&sr=8-1&keywords=schlicting+boundary+layer&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=41ZQZkmQBNL&ref=plSrch

Turbulence modeling is something you can move on to after that. I recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1928729088/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1425473660&sr=8-1&keywords=wilcox+turbulence+modeling

Wilcox goes into much detail about the nature of turbulence and the different methods that have been formulated to model this phenomenon.

Here is a book that talks about the basics of fluid dynamics that is pretty good too:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0123821002/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1425473759&sr=8-1&keywords=kundu+fluid+mechanics&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=41h-Ynv4uGL&ref=plSrch


Another great resource is this set of fluid dynamics videos made a few decades ago. They are awesome and will give you a strong conceptual understanding:
http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf.html

There you go. I'm sorry if I was unclear on anything. Let me know about it and I'll be glad to help you out more.

Now could you point me to some material about how you use hydrodynamics in your field? I love to learn about different fields! Thank you in advance!

u/hooktonfonix08 · 6 pointsr/VirginiaTech

Recently graduated so my advice might be out of date.
It can be kind of risky to get books early in case there is some kind of switch or if the professor prefers another text. This being said, the standard nature of certain class curricula makes it a pretty sure bet on what book they will use.

For as along as I know Statics and Dynamics use the latest edition of Meriam and Kraige. I dont know how frequently those editions are renewed but the material itself doesnt really change.

I don't know what text deforms uses but try to find what last springs classes used (likely they all used the same book) and look for the most recent edition in case it was updated recently.

ENGE 1216 I don't remember having a text.

Never used a book for E Theory and that will depend on your instructor.

Wasn't an ME so I can't help with thermo-fluids

Materials Engineering will almost without a doubt use Callister. http://www.amazon.com/Materials-Science-Engineering-William-Callister/dp/1118324579/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404986941&sr=1-1&keywords=Callister+materials

Hope that helps!

u/jrwst36 · 6 pointsr/Physics

Any will do. Callister is good (and apparently cheap if you buy it used).

When materials crack (that's a clean break between atoms), we call that fracture. Whether a material fractures at the grain boundaries or through the grain is a whole field unto its self called fracture mechanics. There are many things we can do to materials that either promote breaking along grain boundaries or through the grains.

Generally speaking, ceramics break as a fracture and metals don't. That's my ceramics are brittle and metals bend (ductile).

Again generally speaking plastics don't have grains. We call this amorphous. They are composed of long hydrocarbon chains. You can think of a bowl of spaghetti. The spaghetti is stuck together with weak interatomic bonds. Like spaghetti that's gone cold and doesn't have oil on it. Under special cases these chains can align, and polymer scientist would say that they form grains. But it's not quite the same as with metals and ceramics.

Wood is a complicated biological system composed of cells and cell walls. It is amorphous (again, we can define this as no long range ordering of the atoms). I can't really speak to much about wood, but I can say it doesn't have grains.

Again, for material to reattach itself the way it was, it must have no plastic deformation, and the surface must stay clean (i.e. in a vacuum). Of course you could never completely take two surfaces apart and put them back together, because even if it was a clean break, you would have to align the surface properly... down to the atomic level.

u/1namu · 5 pointsr/FluidMechanics

Fluid Mechanics 4th Edition by Kundu (A good graduate level text. The practice problems are really great and challenging. The 5th edition has better practice problems, but the layout and content of the 4th is better IMO.)

Elementary Fluid Dynamics by Achenson (Good graduate level text with mathematical rigor.)

Fluid Mechanics by Granger (A good undergraduate level text.)

An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics by Batchelor (This one is much more advanced than the rest.)

u/Panda_Muffins · 4 pointsr/chemistry

There is a new text by van Santen entitled "Modern Heterogeneous Catalysis: An Introduction". It covers a ton of ground and really gives a great overview of a wide range of modern catalytic reactions that are industrially relevant. I encourage you to check out the table of contents in the free preview to see if it's up your alley. The book tries to give a broad overview of the field as a whole that you could only learn from someone that is an expert in the field.

Another text that is similar in scope is Chorkendorff's "Concepts of Modern Catalysis and Kinetics". This one has a bit more background but isn't as much of a survey of the field as van Santen's text is.

Someone below has mentioned "Fundamental Concepts in Heterogeneous Catalysis" by Norskov. This is a very accessible book but is mainly targeted at the computational catalysis folk (and if this were of interest, I'd also recommend RSC's "Computational Catalysis").

u/ruat_caelum · 3 pointsr/preppers

Not to push but why make it as small as possible? A 2 terabyte usb drive is like $80-95. Price for storage is very very cheap.

Accessing the data is also cheap hardware wise a raspberry pi or any other 35 SOP (system on a chip) can then access and play back that data to a tv, monitor, etc.

Check out a book called The clock of the long now some very very smart people go together about the end of humanity. How do you leave signs, like "don't dig here radioactive waste" to a culture five thousand years in the future who may have any technology range from stone tools to pre industrial, and any language.

That's a no ref amazon link as I could not find something better.

u/angrypom · 3 pointsr/civilengineering

Yeah, need some fun books rather than dry textbooks. J. E. Gordon's books [1] [2] are my favourite :)

u/postdarwin · 3 pointsr/Freethought

If you're intrigued by this idea, I can recommend The Clock of the Long Now.

u/SaltySteamie · 3 pointsr/blackdesertonline

It was ONLY metric in chemistry and physics because that's what is used even in American academia and research

Then we started to use imperial along with metric in engineering because American engineers use mostly imperial

The text used by my statics class: https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Mechanics-Russell-C-Hibbeler/dp/0133918920 uses a mix

u/klystron · 3 pointsr/chemicalreactiongifs

The appearance of car windows through polarised sunglasses is due to the toughening process during manufacture, in which the hot glass is cooled by jets of air. This causes the outside surface to be in a state of compression and the inner surface to be in tension.

Strains in glass can be seen with polarised light, and using polarised sunglasses shows up the pattern of air jets used in the toughening process.

Source: The New Science of Strong Materials JE Gordon, 1968 (Footnote in Chapter 5.)

u/Elliott2 · 3 pointsr/MechanicalEngineering
u/TheLeaderIsGood · 3 pointsr/AskReddit
u/axz055 · 3 pointsr/EngineeringStudents

Callister's book is the standard in MSE programs I've seen. I thought it was pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/Materials-Science-Engineering-An-Introduction/dp/1118324579/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

u/dragoneye · 3 pointsr/engineering
  • Shigley's is my go to for any machine component calculations
  • Engineering Materials by Budinski is pretty good for material information and selection if you can get how full of themselves the authors are
  • BASF Design Solutions Guide (PDF link) is a pretty good resource on designing things like snaps, fits, ribs, etc. and other things related to injection molding design.
  • Machinery's Handbook is just incredibly useful for anything involving fits, threads, etc.
u/k-selectride · 3 pointsr/Physics

I don't know of any decent online particle physics resources. But there are two good books at the undergraduate level I can think of Griffiths and Halzen and Martin

For superconductivity you want to learn many body quantum mechanics, ie non-relativistic quantum field theory. The most common recommendation is Fetter and Walecka, but I might consider Thouless to be superior on account of it being 1/3rd the length and probably only covers core topics. If you feel like dropping a lot of money, Mahan is very good, but also somewhat exhaustive. Might be worth having as a reference depending on how serious you get. I would get F&W and Thouless simply on account of how cheap they are.

u/Bilbo_Fraggins · 2 pointsr/Christianity

FWIW, last time I took political compass quiz I was left libertarian, the exact opposite of all the presidential candidates. I think from their questions they plot me libertarian mostly on anti-war grounds. ;-)

Also, maybe I'm more leftist then I think. ;-)

Though I lean somewhat libertarian, personally I think the US libertarian party is much worse than the major parties on protecting positive liberties and rights. If I had to align with a party, it would be the Greens.

They take both positive rights and liberties seriously and are future focused, something sorely lacking in our society.

Stewart Brand's Clock of the Long Now and Whole Earth Dicipline have highly influenced my thinking.

If you don't know who Stewart Brand is, he is one of the most influential people of the last century in both environmentalism and technology, and is a deep pragmatist worth taking seriously, unlike many in the movement he helped start.

u/treeses · 2 pointsr/Physics

Whatever software you are using will have documentation on how to run calculations and interpret the output. That will be the most practical source for what you are doing. For more info on the DFT method, any computation chemistry book will do. Cramer and Jensen are popular, but I've heard this monograph is great too.

u/J-Nug · 2 pointsr/EngineeringStudents

I am doing my master's in fluids and have had a few different books. I think my favorite was Granger's book and as a bonus it's really cheap!

http://www.amazon.com/Fluid-Mechanics-Dover-Books-Physics/dp/0486683567

u/dangersandwich · 2 pointsr/AskEngineers

Many universities including the one I went to use Hibbeler for statics and Meriam-Kraige for general dynamics (or some combination of these authors). I wouldn't worry about getting the absolute latest edition of these books — anything published later than ~2005 should be about the same.

It also looks like Hibbeler authored a combined statics-dynamics text to cover both topics, but I've never used it.

u/ReconTiger · 2 pointsr/AskEngineers

I would suggest you read your textbook, if you do not have one pertaining to materials, I would suggest Callister's Mat Sci & Engr: An Intro. Also if you are struggling this early in the semester, you may want to consider visiting the professor during office hours...

u/heymister · 2 pointsr/books

A few reddit favorites: House of Leaves

Neuromancer

Slaughterhouse Five

1984

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Ishmael

Cryptonomicon

The Monster at the End of This Book (and that's no a joke, it was so important to me as a child, because of what it did with the story that I read it to my own son)

and a few not on that list: The Clock of the Long Now (by Stewart Brand)

Hot House (by Pete Early)

Underworld ( by Don Delillo)

Disgrace (by J.M. Coetzee)

The Eden Express (by Mark Vonnegut)

And one book I recently picked up (because I liked the author's first novel) really blew me away: The Unnamed (by Joshua Ferris).

u/Thermodynamicist · 2 pointsr/technology

The problem is generally going to be the microstructure of the cell rather than the Chemistry itself. At really small scales (ie nano and sub-nano) you can almost always reverse the Chemistry by reversing the flow of electricity.

If you wanted a really crude tl;dr for battery technology development, it would be, microstructure is annoying; going to a nano scale takes microstructure out of the equation, and this can get you much closer to the performance implied by simple chemistry.

This also applies to making really strong materials; if there weren't microstructural defects messing everything up, you'd be able to directly relate material properties to chemical bond energies. If you do sums on that basis then you end up with very impressive performance. So carbon nano-tubes aren't so much massively strong, as not massively weakened by microstructural defects. See for example the excellent works of J.E. Gordon.

u/tdashrom · 2 pointsr/Clemson

Trust me, use this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Mechanics-Statics-Dynamics-14th/dp/0133915425

The pdf versions and worked out solutions to all the problems are floating around the internet in pdf form somewhere. This book saved me and was a WAY better resource than anything they used in class

u/Ozz123 · 1 pointr/PoliticalHumor

Doubt that I would ever go back but who knows what the future holds.

The main phase of the bachelor covers both (in-)organic (everything from orbitals to polymers to reaction mechanisms) and physical chemistry (reaction kinetics etc). After which you can chose your specialization. Since I suck at memorizing things I went the physical/analytical route which is identifying components (both quantitative and qualitative) in mixtures (solid/liquid/gas mixtures) and the theory behind them. My minor consisted of a crapton of math (had to take additional courses which weren't covered in my 'official main phase') and basically this whole book.

Have to admit that I've forgotten most it by now though :p

u/redly · 1 pointr/engineering

I'm a mechanical, but I found J.E. Gordon's

https://www.amazon.ca/New-Science-Strong-Materials-Gordon/dp/0140135979/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=why+you+don%27t+fall+through+the+floor&qid=1554554032&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

and

https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=structures+or+why+things+don%27t+fall+down&crid=2RE2JL3NBE3K6&sprefix=why+things+don%2Caps%2C191&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14

both entertaining and eye-opening. Gordon was in on the beginning of fracture mechanics, but snuck away from classes to soak in an art gallery. I particularly remember that wood is a great material for panels (if it didn't exist we would have to invent it) that on a weight basis sinew is nearly the best material for energy storage, and that amphorae were the Greek equivalent of the Coke can, and they are beautiful because the Greeks were incapable of creating anything ugly. Seeing a can in the street reminds me that we are not only capable, but nearly revel in our ability.

The really eye-opening one for me were his comments on masonry structures, particularly scaling. If you build a model of a cathedral, and it stands up, it can be built to any scale until you reach the compressive strength of the rock, which is kilometres high. That means that the cathedral that took 400 years to build had its foundations laid by people who knew that their granchildren's granchildren would not see it completed.

We don't build like that anymore.

Neither book is nuts and bolts, light on math, and more directed to sharpening your eye than beefing up your calculations.

I'm sure all the materials science is out of date, but I doubt that much of it is wrong.


u/rodentdp · 1 pointr/books

The Clock of the Long Now, by Stewart Brand. A short, open-ended discussion about history, technology, information, time.

u/forest11235 · 1 pointr/chemistry

What you are looking for is called Material Characterization by Leng.
http://www.amazon.com/Materials-Characterization-Introduction-Microscopic-Spectroscopic/dp/3527334637

u/thisisafarmer · 1 pointr/civilengineering
u/engineeringChaos · 1 pointr/videos

I was in this exact class, and you couldn't be more wrong. He writes all his own exams, draws all the figures himself. Shit, he even wrote the book on dynamics. He legitimately cares about students learning, his office is always filled with ~7 students when he has hours.

u/Mikey_B · 1 pointr/AskPhysics

I'm not sure what you mean by a "field study". If you mean experiments, then yes, there are likely hundreds or thousands, as this is well-established theory that predicts numerous results in condensed matter physics; e.g. electronic properties of metals, superconductivity, superfluidity, etc.

This topic can be found in any of the standard texts on many-body physics, a subject also often referred to as condensed-matter quantum field theory. My favorites are "AGD" (i.e. the guys who invented this technique), Mahan, and Coleman (which is the most pedagogical of the three).

If you're looking for something to Google, you might want to try "finite temperature field theory" and "Matsubara formalism".

I'm not sure what your level is, but this is pretty technical stuff; I literally never heard of these concepts (other than randomly hearing the phrase "imaginary time") until taking a graduate course on many-body theory. I honestly don't know of any popular books that discuss finite temperature QFT in detail (not that I'm particularly well-versed in the popular literature, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that usually makes its way into the usual "multiverse/wormhole/strings/black holes" books). If you want to know more in detail, but don't know what a time evolution operator is, you'll need to learn basic nonrelativistic quantum mechanics; R. Shankar's book is a good way to learn about that, though Griffiths is a bit more accessible.

u/xtuntx · 1 pointr/textbooks

>The Science and Engineering of Materials 7th edition

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Engineering-Materials-Donald-Askeland/dp/1305077105

u/AgAero · 1 pointr/math

That's where a course in dynamics comes into play. I cannot recommend this book enough when it comes to the subject of vectorial analysis of dynamics. Rao is extremely detailed and systematic throughout. By the end of the book you can prove things like the tennis racket theorem, or derive the equations of motion of complicated systems like this.

u/DJbuttcrack · 1 pointr/engineering

i used a similar edition to this in school. It has exactly what you're looking for.
There is a program somewhere that has this information built in, and can generate your graphs, but unfortunately I don't remember the name, nor do I believe you could/would pony up the license fee.

u/OrbitalPete · 1 pointr/ScienceTeachers

There is no 'complete' text book on fluid mechanics; it's a massive area of study, and there are thousands of publications every year that move it forward.

I really think your best bet is to pick up an introductory book and go from there. Different sub fields and specialisms apply different areas of fluid mechanics in different ways. And don't forget that turbulence - which is a massive part of fluid mechanics - is still an unsolved problem. If you then start looking at complex materials like slurries, granular materials, and other 2-phase mixtures then you're getting into realms of really rather extraordinary complexity.

I find this to be a pretty good starting place (although I have the 4th edition - I haven't seen the 5th) : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fluid-Mechanics-Pijush-K-Kundu/dp/0123821002/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496312409&sr=1-1&keywords=kundu

u/snipatomic · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

The Feynman lectures are really good, and they will take you from basic physics to quantum mechanics.

Get yourself a good groundwork in physics before you worry about flashy things like relativity. The ability to spout out fancy words about fancy-sounding fields really means nothing if you don't actually understand what you are talking about.

Now, this said, once you are ready to dive into quantum mechanics, I'd personally recommend Griffiths.

As a chemical engineer specialized in electron microscopy, I am partial to solid-state physics and physics at the atomic scale, so if you are interested in such small things, I would recommend Callister as an introductory book (it is basically the bible of materials science, and is an excellent beginner book and reference) and Kasap as a very readable book on solid-state physics.

With any such books, unless you are using the book for a class and it is required that you have a particular version, don't worry about getting the newest edition. An older edition will generally save you a lot of money if you purchase a hard copy. That said, it is easy enough to find most of them digitally if you are so inclined.

u/studentthinker · 1 pointr/atheism

A good wikipedia page on the square-cube law to start digging for various sources. It's such a solid part of maths and materials that most papers on it are probably filled with 'thou art' and so forth.

Again a wikipedia page, this time on fracture mechanics and, specifically the 'griffiths crack length'. This stuff was worked out after WW1 boats started splitting in half unexpectedly due to square portholes and access hatches rather than ones with rounded edges. This subject is so demonstrated we cover it in first-year engineering at uni.

A great pair of books on the subject that are both very informative AND fun to read rather than just dry academia are Structures; or why things don't fall down and The new science of strong materials; or why we don't fall through the flaw. I know those links are for amazon but hopefully you can find a copy in a library or something.

u/KnowsAboutMath · 1 pointr/math

Fluid Mechanics by Granger is fairly elementary.

u/dfbrown82 · 1 pointr/Physics

The best text on QM that I have is Kroemer's book.

u/ofDAeast · 1 pointr/EngineeringStudents

I don't know if it's possible to learn everything materials science. It is such a broad discipline. Think about every physical thing that exists then imagine learning about current and developing processes to make that material perform better. Getting a general understanding of the main principles is your best bet. Heres a textbook I recommend reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Engineering-Materials-Donald-Askeland/dp/1305077105