Book Review: Applied MAPLE for Engineers and Scientists, C. Tocci and S. Adams, Artech House Books, London, U.K., 1996, ISBN 0-89006-853-4, vii+406 pp. £49.00
✍ Scribed by R. Arelhi
- Book ID
- 101285368
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 70 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0890-6327
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Before the advent of computer-aided design (CAD), writing and developing the software necessary to analyse and synthesize a problem was a major effort. Now, CAD is an indispensible tool and is easily accessible to engineers, scientists and students for research and teaching purposes. From programming languages like Fortran and Basic where users had to spend hours to develop long routines to solve a particular problem, we now have a growing number of softwares with specific toolboxes where built-in routines can provide solutions in just a few minutes. One such software is MAPLE which was invented in 1980 at the University of Waterloo. Beginning with its leadership in mathematical computing, MAPLE maintains its lead through continued research and development which put its mathematical power into scientific applications. In the book, the authors show how various engineering problems can be solved using MAPLE.
We first give an overview of the book which has eight chapters in total and includes a disk. The files on the disk help enhance the readers' learning process. The authors have chosen to discuss a wide scope of topics rather than focus on a selected few. Most of the chapters in the book have been organized in the following sequence: (i) brief background theory, (ii) aim of chapter, (iii) examples or case studies with MAPLE applications and (iv) conclusions including comments and advice. Now we describe the contents of the book is some detail. The book begins with Chapter 1, the only chapter that discusses the syntax and programming language of MAPLE. Though brief, it manages to illustrate the strengths of MAPLE: ability to represent and calculate large quantities exactly and approximately, use of symbolic quantities which can be operated on and substituted for known values, extensive Help database, powerful graphical display and data storage.
Chapter 2 is on active filter design and analysis. A first attempt is made to design a 1 kHz Butterworth low-pass filter. Two iterations are then performed: first to meet the desired cut-off frequency and then to add more signal attenuation. A test set-up is demonstrated and magnitude/phase and time responses are obtained to evaluate the filter's performance. Chapter 3 deals with the problem of data curve fitting. The use of MAPLE to perform curve fitting using several approaches such as the linear regression using a logarithmic representation of the Gaussian model, the Levenberg-Marquardt (non-linear regression) algorithm and the polynomial regression