INTERNATIONALJOURNALFOR NUMERICAL METHODS I N ENGINEERING, VOL.
35, 437-438 (1992)
BOOK REVIEWS
CADICAM-THEORY AND PRACTICE, by Ibrahim
Zeid, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1991. No. of pages:
1052 ISBN &07-072857-7. Price: US $55.95.
One of the most difficult aspects of educating
people in the fundamentals of design automation
has been a lack of integration between its engin-
eering and computing aspects. Classically, one
takes separate coursework in aspects such as
mechanical engineering, finite element analysis,
computer graphics and applied geometry. The in-
tegration of these topics is often left to laboratory
courses, thesis work or practice in industry.
This book is a welcome effort to create a funda-
mental textbook on design automation. It covers
the areas mentioned above, as well as other applied
aspects of CAD/CAM including computing hard-
ware and software, the IGES and PDES data
exchange formats, user interfaces and manufac-
turing.
Individual sections such as those on geometric
modelling, computer graphics and finite element
mesh generation have about the right level of detail
for both the student and practitioners who need to
reference specific algorithms. In areas such as sur-
face and solid mathematics, the chapters here are
competitive as reference material with entire books
on these topics. A chapter on computer graphics
animation, a topic rarely seen in textbooks, is
excellent and up-to-date. The overall treatment is
readable, and gives a good overview of the field
and its technical issues.
A major challenge in writing a textbook
covering a young, evolving field is the rate at which
concepts become out of date. In this field in partic-
ular, the lead time in publishing a book can exceed
the useful lifespan of computing hardware, and
even algorithms. A chapter written by Terry Woh-
3
ANNUAL REVIEW OF HEAT T R A N S F E R - V O h m
Ed. C . L. Tien, Hemisphere Publishing Com-
pany, London, Washington. 312pp-&60.00-
ISBN-0-891 16-743-9- 1990
This book is the third volume of a series ori-
ginally named Annual Review of Numerical
Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer edited by
0 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
lers on micro-CAD, for example, addresses an area
which is becoming less distinct as personal compu-
ter systems evolve into workstations and fewer
software packages offer ‘micro’ versions. The chap-
ter on surfaces focuses on older Hermite surfaces
and only briefly mentions B-spline surfaces in an
industry which is increasingly turning towards
non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) methods.
Discussions of specific hardware and software sys-
tems, while thorough and accurate, focus o n some
platforms that have become obsolete or nearly so
by publication time. My hope is that the second
edition will pare down and update this material to
become a more permanent work of reference.
Its few other weak points include the section on
finite element methods, which perhaps jumps too
quickly into detailed mathematics for the student
or casual practitioner, and a wide and somewhat
disjoint range of complexity in the example pro-
blems. At the same time, it is clearly a challenge to
create assignment problems in an field that by
nature involves a variety of computing environ-
ments.
O n the whole, a book which functions as an
overview and reference of CAD/CAM as a unified
discipline is long overdue. The CAD/CAM/MCAE
industry now has thousands of practitioners, and
formal courses and academic programs in CAD-
/CAM are becoming more the rule than the excep-
tion. This book is a major work in both size and
scope, and is well positioned to become a funda-
mental text in the field.
RICHARDS. GALLAGHER
Swunson Analysis Systems
Houston, P A U.S.A.
T. C. Chawla. The present volume focuses at-
tention on heat transfer and consists of eight chap-
ters. Each chapter treats a significant and emerging
topic by starting from fundamentals and then pro-
ceeding in a logical fashion to the forefront of
recent developments. In the first chapter the in-
verse method is discussed to obtain the boundary
conditions that maintain optimal thermal condi-
438 BOOK REVIEWS
tions of biological materials in addition to provid-
ing a model for freezing of biological tissue. The
second chapter reviews the studies of condensation
heat transfer of binary vapour mixtures with vari-
ous flow and condensing surface conditions, and
provides a method to estimate precisely by theory
the heat transfer coefficient for condensation on
the outside of tubes. The third chapter on the
importance of the interface in film condensation
provides useful information on the method of de-
termining the conditions when several parameters
like interfacial shear stress, vapour superheat, non-
condensable gas effects are important. The fourth
chapter discusses significant thermo-dynamic and
heat and mass transfer problems arising from the
application of twin-film superconductors de-
veloped at liquid-nitrogen temperatures. A com-
parative analysis of a carefully selected set of mo-
dels of heat and mass transfer in the presence of
phase change in porous media is presented in
chapter five along with a critical review of the
literature. The necessity of considering the non-
thermal-equilibrium in the models is also dis-
cussed. The sixth chapter compares the heat trans-
fer rates in packed beds and granular flows, and
establishes physical reasons for their differences
and suggests work on a unifying analysis covering
all types of gas-solid systems. Vedat Aspaci, as
usual, provides a new view of looking at the turbu-
lence and heat transfer correlations in chapter
seven. He provides two new scales of turbulence
for forced flows and two new heat transfer models
which agree well with experimental data. Similar
micro scales are given for buoyancy driven flows
also. The last chapter deals with the application of
asymptotic considerations in convective heat
transfer, for the purposes of gaining insight on
appropriate scales for non-dimensionalization,
similitude and order of magnitude estimates, and
of deriving well motivated computational schemes.
Any serious researchers in the field of heat transfer
will highly benefit from the material presented in
the book.
K. N. Seetharamu
IIT Madras