Review of Dynamics of structures: Theory and applications to earthquake engineering by Anil S. Chopra

Abstract

I am most pleased to be asked to provide a review of the subject textbook. I have used both the first and second editions of this book over the past two years for classes in structural dynamics and in earthquake engineering. In my mind, this textbook is an excellent resource for the pedagogy of the graduate classroom, as well as a powerful aide to practicing structural engineers for their use in understanding the dynamics of structures and their response to ground motion. The book is organized into three parts: Part I deals with the fundamentals of undamped and damped single degree of freedom ~SDOF! systems; Part II, undamped and damped multidegree of freedom ~MDOF! systems; and Part III, earthquake response and design of multistory buildings. Each academic year I teach most of the material for a two-course graduate sequence from Chopra’s book. The first course is an introductory class in structural dynamics, and the second is a more advanced class in earthquake engineering. In my first class in structural dynamics, over the course of a 15-week semester, I use material from five of the eight chapters in Part I ~which cover SDOF equations of motion, free vibration with and without damping, response to harmonic and arbitrary loadings and ground motions, and response spectra methods!. I also use material from five of the nine chapters in Part II ~which cover MDOF equations of motion, free vibration with and without damping, and the very important topic of modal methods for linear systems!. In my second semester class in earthquake engineering, I use one chapter from Part I dealing with earthquake response of linear systems, two chapters from Part II of the book, which deal with earthquake analysis of linear systems and tuned-mass damping, and three of the four chapters in Part III of the book, which address topics in multistory buildings, elastic and inelastic response, and structural dynamics in building codes. The book provides numerous examples which illustrate the theory, and which are very useful as explanatory material for the classroom. Some of the exercises in the back of each chapter