Free Online Engineering Textbooks

Engineering is one of those academic disciplines where students must take a variety of courses to be prepared to work in their field. Wikiepedia calls engineering, "the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of people."

I've been disappointed that it hasn't been easier to find more online engineering textbooks to share with you here. It would seem since technology plays such a major role in their day-to-day activities that they would be among the educators and scholars who would readily embrace the Open Textbook movement. Hopefully, I have just been looking in the wrong places and will find many more online texts to share with everyone.

If you are an engineering student, scholar or educator and know of any materials that anyone working towards an engineering degree would find useful, please let me know.

A Heat Transfer Textbook

This online engineering textbook was in its 4th edition when I last visited their site. It is written by the father and son team of John H. Lienhard IV, Professor, University of Houston and John H. Lienhard V, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been offered freely online since 2000. It is an introduction to heat and mass transfer which is geared for engineering students in their junior or senior years or their first year of graduate school. It covers conduction, convection, phase-change, radiation and introduces mass transfer.

Last Verified: (Oct 4, 2011)

Aerodynamics for Students

This free online aerodynamics textbook is offered by D.J. Auld & K.Srinivas with contributions from the students and friends of the Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering Department at the University of Sydney. Chapter titles include: Fundamentals of Fluid Mechanics, Introduction to Flight Operations and Instrumentation, Subsonic Aerodynamics, Gasdynamics (Supersonic Aerodynamics), Aircraft Performance, Propulsion and Aeroelasticity.

Last Verified: (Oct 12, 2011)

Applied Aerodynamics

This online textbook stems from a first-year graduate-level course at Stanford University. The author also recommends the applied aerodynamics text for undergraduate students and any interested readers. The materials are presented with links to additional materials, animations, videos and interactive programs. The materials were written and are maintained by Ilan Kroo, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford. The text begins with a discussion of fluid dynamics and progresses to airfoil design, wing lift distributions and wing design and other topics.

Last Verified: (Oct 4, 2011)

Basics of Fluid Mechanics

A textbook for engineers and other science students which describes the fundamentals of fluid mechanics. It is designed for undergraduate students as well as "technical people." Author Dr. Genick Bar-Meir suggests that students have a basic knowledge of calculus and physics before using this engineering textbooks.

Last Verified: (Sep 11, 2011)

Engineering Mechanics for Structures

Part of the MIT Open Courseware program in Civil and Environmental Engineering, this textbook is used for the Solid Mechanics course. The online text is written by Professor Louis Bucciarelli in 2002. It covers the mechanics of solids and statics along with the strength of materials and elasticity theory.

Last Verified: (Oct 6, 2011)

Fundamentals of Compressible Flow

Students will be introduced to the flow of compressible substances. What I liked about this book is that it starts out with an explanation why compressible flow is important. Without reading too far into the text, I had a general understanding of what the text was going to discuss even though this subject was not something I was familiar with. This engineering textbook was written by Genick Bar-Meir and is part of the Potto Project open-content project.

Last Verified: (Sep 9, 2011)

Fundamentals of Die Casting Design

This book is still being finalized and is only available as a download but if it is anything like the other book by Dr. Genick Bar-Meir that I looked at, it is certainly worth a look-see for anyone studying this topic. The About passage discusses the failure of many die casting companies failure to continually review their designs and processes to identify potential cost savings.

Last Verified: (Sep 9, 2011)

Holistic Numerical Methods

Resource website with information designed for students taking a Numerical Methods course as part of an engineering major or computer science, chemistry, physics, geology or biology majors will often apply many of the topics covered in a traditional numerical methods course. The materials are offered with different versions based upon the student's engineering course of study and the mathematics software that they use. A large team of professors, graduate students and undergraduates maintain this reference site. A number of topics are covered under the following primary headings: Differentiation, Nonlinear Equations, Simultaneous Linear Equations, Interpolation, Regression, Integration and Ordinary Differential Equations.

Last Verified: (Oct 12, 2011)

Lessons in Electric Circuits

This online electrical engineering textbook, written by Tony R. Kuphaldt, is considered a living textbook by the author. He plans to continually add new materials, expand on the old and not remove old content simply to save space like printed textbooks force so many authors to do. There are six volumes to this text - DC, AC, Semiconductors, Digital, Reference and Experiments. Every volume is being continuously updated (changes had been made to each volume only three months before I visited the site). Charts, diagrams and equations accompany most topics.

Last Verified: (Sep 11, 2011)

Materials Engineering, Science & Technology

Norfolk State University in conjunction with NASA are offering this free online engineering textbook. Chapter titles include: Ceramics, Composites, Electronic & Optical, Manufacturing, Metals, Nanotechnology, Polymers, Structure & Testing and Biologically Inspired Materials and Morphing.

Last Verified: (Oct 9, 2011)

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