Best hydraulics books according to redditors

507 Mechanical Movements: Avaliable in print or online

thang010146 on youtube

Cornell's kmoddl library (temporarily down, it looks like)

For linkages, the Hrones and Nelson Atlas

This is my favorite. Although used in my undergrad course, it's highly theoretical Fluid Mechanics: Landau & Lifshitz

Hydraulics and Pneumatics for Techs and Engineers Written by a controls guy.

Industrial Hydraulics Manual 5. The Eaton bible: a must have.

I'd like to give you my two cents as well on how to proceed here. If nothing else, this will be a second opinion. If I could redo my physics education, this is how I'd want it done.

If you are truly wanting to learn these fields in depth I cannot stress how important it is to actually work problems out of these books, not just read them. There is a certain understanding that comes from struggling with problems that you just can't get by reading the material. On that note, I would recommend getting the Schaum's outline to whatever subject you are studying if you can find one. They are great books with hundreds of solved problems and sample problems for you to try with the answers in the back. When you get to the point you can't find Schaums anymore, I would recommend getting as many solutions manuals as possible. The problems will get very tough, and it's nice to verify that you did the problem correctly or are on the right track, or even just look over solutions to problems you decide not to try.

Basics

I second Stewart's Calculus cover to cover (except the final chapter on differential equations) and Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics. Not all sections from HRW are necessary, but be sure you have the fundamentals of mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, and thermal physics down at the level of HRW.

Once you're done with this move on to studying differential equations. Many physics theorems are stated in terms of differential equations so really getting the hang of these is key to moving on. Differential equations are often taught as two separate classes, one covering ordinary differential equations and one covering partial differential equations. In my opinion, a good introductory textbook to ODEs is one by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. That said, there is another book by V. I. Arnold that I would recommend you get as well. The Arnold book may be a bit more mathematical than you are looking for, but it was written as an introductory text to ODEs and you will have a deeper understanding of ODEs after reading it than your typical introductory textbook. This deeper understanding will be useful if you delve into the nitty-gritty parts of classical mechanics. For partial differential equations I recommend the book by Haberman. It will give you a good understanding of different methods you can use to solve PDEs, and is very much geared towards problem-solving.

From there, I would get a decent book on Linear Algebra. I used the one by Leon. I can't guarantee that it's the best book out there, but I think it will get the job done.

This should cover most of the mathematical training you need to move onto the intermediate level physics textbooks. There will be some things that are missing, but those are usually covered explicitly in the intermediate texts that use them (i.e. the Delta function). Still, if you're looking for a good mathematical reference, my recommendation is Lua. It may be a good idea to go over some basic complex analysis from this book, though it is not necessary to move on.

Intermediate

At this stage you need to do intermediate level classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics at the very least. For electromagnetism, Griffiths hands down. In my opinion, the best pedagogical book for intermediate classical mechanics is Fowles and Cassidy. Once you've read these two books you will have a much deeper understanding of the stuff you learned in HRW. When you're going through the mechanics book pay particular attention to generalized coordinates and Lagrangians. Those become pretty central later on. There is also a very old book by Robert Becker that I think is great. It's problems are tough, and it goes into concepts that aren't typically covered much in depth in other intermediate mechanics books such as statics. I don't think you'll find a torrent for this, but it is 5 bucks on Amazon. That said, I don't think Becker is necessary. For quantum, I cannot recommend Zettili highly enough. Get this book. Tons of worked out examples. In my opinion, Zettili is the best quantum book out there at this level. Finally for thermal physics I would use Mandl. This book is merely sufficient, but I don't know of a book that I liked better.

This is the bare minimum. However, if you find a particular subject interesting, delve into it at this point. If you want to learn Solid State physics there's Kittel. Want to do more Optics? How about Hecht. General relativity? Even that should be accessible with Schutz. Play around here before moving on. A lot of very fascinating things should be accessible to you, at least to a degree, at this point.

Advanced

Before moving on to physics, it is once again time to take up the mathematics. Pick up Arfken and Weber. It covers a great many topics. However, at times it is not the best pedagogical book so you may need some supplemental material on whatever it is you are studying. I would at least read the sections on coordinate transformations, vector analysis, tensors, complex analysis, Green's functions, and the various special functions. Some of this may be a bit of a review, but there are some things Arfken and Weber go into that I didn't see during my undergraduate education even with the topics that I was reviewing. Hell, it may be a good idea to go through the differential equations material in there as well. Again, you may need some supplemental material while doing this. For special functions, a great little book to go along with this is Lebedev.

Beyond this, I think every physicist at the bare minimum needs to take graduate level quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. For quantum, I recommend Cohen-Tannoudji. This is a great book. It's easy to understand, has many supplemental sections to help further your understanding, is pretty comprehensive, and has more worked examples than a vast majority of graduate text-books. That said, the problems in this book are LONG. Not horrendously hard, mind you, but they do take a long time.

Unfortunately, Cohen-Tannoudji is the only great graduate-level text I can think of. The textbooks in other subjects just don't measure up in my opinion. When you take Classical mechanics I would get Goldstein as a reference but a better book in my opinion is Jose/Saletan as it takes a geometrical approach to the subject from the very beginning. At some point I also think it's worth going through Arnold's treatise on Classical. It's very mathematical and very difficult, but I think once you make it through you will have as deep an understanding as you could hope for in the subject.

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.)

Sigh.

Anyone who throws there hands up and says "lolwut, itz too complicated i dunno!" is not a skeptic. Do you honestly think that climate scientists don't study natural phenomena like the ones on this list and try to understand their causes and implications? This post is especially pathetic, but it's literally just a list of natural phenomena; if you think think this stuff is what makes the climate complex, then you literally don't know anything about atmospheric science.

You might want to start with the following textbooks, which any climate scientist will have devoured by the time they have a Masters -

• Global Physical Climatology
  
  
• An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology
  
  
• Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics
  
  
• Atmospheric Science: an Introductory Survey
  
  
• Fundamentals of Large Scale Circulation
  
  
• Dynamics and Ice Sheets of Glaciers
  
  
• Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation
  
  There are, of course, higher level textbooks on my shelf as well. The majority of the stuff on this list is basic stuff that an undergraduate would be exposed to. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what our science is actually about.
  
  EDIT TO ADD -
  For example, geostrophy is this list. Do you know what geostrophic motion is? It's motion where the only forces acting on a parcel are the Coriolis force and the pressure gradient force. How do you get to geostrophic motion? Well, on the first day of your Junior year as a meteorology student, you start taking Atmospheric Dynamics. Your professor throws Navier-Stokes on the board and says "This is what we need to solve to figure out how the atmosphere works." Then he mentions that there is a million dollar prize for working with that equation and says "okay, let's see if we can simplify things." After that, you spend a few lectures deriving atmospheric motion following Holton, Lindzen, or Serreze - talking about the Rossby radius, coordinate transformations, Eulerian vs. Lagrangian and material derivatives, and path integrals through moving reference frames.
  
  Ultimately you re-derive equations of motion from scratch starting with F=ma, and arrive at a 3D set of equations where motion is determined by terms relating to the pressure gradient, accelerations, friction, gravity, and the Coriolis force. Then, you scale analyze the terms of the equations to see what the dominating terms are, given certain assumptions.
  
  Assume you're above the PBL; then, friction is negligible. You'll immediately see that acceleration/velocity-related terms are an order of magnitude smaller than the other terms. Assume hydrostatic balance and there is no acceleration in the vertical, truncating your motion to two dimensions. You're left with a balance of forces in both your basis vectors - pressure gradient and coriolis. Balance these two and you can solve for a balanced flow called geostrophic flow. Geostrophic flow is super-simple and only really works as an approximation for upper-level flows with small curvature (i.e. you need features larger than the Rossby radius of deformation or else the assumptions about 2D velocity are invalid). But it's a great learning tool for meteorology students to get their hands dirty with the math, and derive from first principles why flow is counter-clockwise around Low Pressures in the northern hemisphere.
  
  Relax some assumptions and you can also get gradient flow or cyclostrophic flow.
  
  You can't do any meteorology with these flows, though - you need at least to relax geostrophy and derive quasi-geostrophy with the aid of the circulation and divergence theorems to actually get vertical motion which is diagnosable from thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.
  
  Anything else from the domain of the atmospheric science that the skeptics here want explained? Now's your chance.

I work in process design and reference these daily:

• Perry's
  
• Crane Technical Paper No. 410
  
• Cameron Hydraulic Data
  
  EDIT:
  And yes, the FE Supplied Reference Manual is extremely useful.
  

zomg I thought it was just me.

I have these books on mechanical movements ( 1800 mechanical movements and 507 mechanical movements ) that I've almost memorized, plus machine tools and how they're made. I also know the basics of how to drill for oil, build a car, and make a transistor.

now I just need to apply it to making a time machine, and I'm set.

Or this one: Industrial Hydraulics Manual

Numerical Simulation in Fluid Dynamics: A Practical Introduction
The nice thing about this book is that it guides you through the creation of a basic CFD code with lots of pseudo code and recommended method interfaces and data structures. The discretization is done in finite differences. Advanced topics like turbulence, energy transport and free boundary problems are also discussed.

Computational Methods for Fluid Dynamics
In contrast to the first one, this book does not provide you any recommendations regarding the implementation but covers more topics like finite volume discretization, numerical solvers, multigrid, DNS, LES etc.

I would say, if you want a practical approach, pick the first one, if you are more interested in the theory of different methods and concepts, pick the second one.

I've used one of Uncle Al's presses before and it seemed to work pretty well. It looks like you can buy them through Old World Anvils.

Another that gets a lot of good reviews is the press from Ron Claiborne.

There's also the presses from Carolina Custom Knives. I haven't used one, but they look pretty stout.

If you have a good welding/fab shop in your area, you could get Jim Batson's plans for building a press and have it built for you. I'd recommend a single larger cylinder though, the dual cylinders can be hard to sync and uneven pressure on the dies can be dangerous and frustrating. If you can afford to take some time, shop around for cylinders and pumps and then have the press built around it.

I'd say that if you're a beginner, just watch tons of videos about automatas, how do they move, what are they built with, etc.

If you want to know more about mechanical movements, Amazon is your friend: 507 Mechanical Movements: Mechanisms and Devices

I'd recommend to start easy. Simple movements, great effect. Your creativity is the fulcrum.

507 Mechanical Movements - Just a fun book for the mechanically minded engineer

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0978802209

Look up Eaton training and their book on industrial hydraulics. I use it Dailey
.

I've become greatly interested in geometric concepts in physics. I would like some opinions on these text for self study. If there are better options, please share.

For a differential geometry approach for Classical Mechanics:
Saletan?

For a General self study or reference book:
Frankel or Nakahara?

For applications in differential geometry:
Fecko or Burke?



Also, what are good texts for Geometric Electrodynamics that includes spin geometry?

This is the one some of my friends have used and they enjoyed it. Haven't used it myself though so I can't speak to it.

These are supposed to be pretty good: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fluid-Mechanics-Course-Theoretical-Physics/dp/0750627670; Lev Landau in his seminal series of texts.

What are you interested in learning about? You could learn about:

• Computational fluid mechanics
  
• Fluids dynamics pertinent to aerospace
  
• Fluids as they relate to combustion
  
• Fluids appearing in biological systems
  
• Theoretical/mathematical foundations
  
  Each topic is broad and, likely, have their own texts. Another consideration is what your background is. I assume that you have had coursework in vector analysis and differential equations. With this in mind I offer the following classic/affordable texts:
  
  
• Batchelor's An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics
  
• Lamb's Hydrodynamics
  
  Perhaps a more structured beginning would be MIT Course 16.01-16.04.
  

I knew this picture looked familiar!
It's on the cover of my Turbulence in Rotating, Stratified, and Electrically Conducting Fluids book.

Check DJ Tritton, Physical Fluid Dynamics. Written by an experimentalist , it's great for developing intuition.

https://www.amazon.in/dp/0198544936/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_nkNrDbSVMW9YZ

I'd say a copy of Cameron Hydraulic Data. Every teacher that I had for any of my water classes basically calls it the holy grail of all hydraulics books.

The Cameron Hydraulic Data Book is basically the bible of pumps for many engineers that I work with.

Also, many pump distributors will provide a wealth of education if you are a decision maker in terms of specifying or ordering pumps. I've been to several training sessions where the local distributor brought in an engineer from the manufacturer for lunch-and-learns, etc.

I did my masters project on vorticity, and the book I kept referring to for the basic fluids stuff was David Acheson's book. Very readable.

Quantum Mechanics as Classical Physics Another step to understanding of quantum mechanics as an extension of classical multiparticle physics. The new approach seeks to take seriously quantum theory’s hydrodynamic formulation which was developed by Erwin Madelung in the 1920s.

Here is a classical book on the subject. You can click the 'look inside' to get a glimpse of some of this.

Here is a google scholar citation for a paper my advisor worked on covering these topics. Much of what I'm referring to is 50+ years old so looking through the citations may prove useful to you. I'm on vacation at the moment so I cannot access the papers myself due to being behind paywalls(vpn isn't working lately...).

Complex analysis is also used in hydrodynamic stability theory.

The simplest example is probably the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, followed by the Plateau-Rayleigh instability of a liquid jet. Analysis of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and the instability of generalized plane viscous flow have also been done, but are a lot more complicated.

Try looking at Hydrodynamic Stability by Drazin and Reid. The first chapter gives some of these more basic examples, and all of these analyses use complex variables.

If you are interested in vortex methods, this is a decent book.

https://www.amazon.com/Vortex-Methods-Practice-Georges-Henri-Cottet/dp/0521621860

I briefly worked with vortex methods and I actually had to cycle between papers and theses and this book to get it working. Its actually a nice method for incompressible flows but I could never get boundary conditions for walls to work. But in say, a periodic domain it works well.

I haven't gotten it in front of my own eyes, but it's on my wishlist and has good reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0978802209/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=APCELNUT4TH0&coliid=I3QQ5IX0PKQK6T

They have some other stuff too, http://www.hydraulicsliteraturestore.com/trma.html

I'd have to get back to my desk to check if Mark's or if the Machinery Handbook have info on schematics/symbols.

PM me the print and I'll take a look at it, see if it's in my realm of understanding.

Either trade school or get a job at a hydraulic shop. I'll second getting on the IFPS website and start looking at the certifications and testing.

Start the learning process now. At a base level hydraulics is easy (pumps make flow, resistance to flow builds pressure) but quickly gets complicated once you start getting to the controls side.

Find a book like this

is this the one you're talking about? If so, i have it too...good book. https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Hydraulics-Manual-Eaton-Training/dp/0963416251

http://www.amazon.com/Fluid-Mechanics-Second-Theoretical-Physics/dp/0750627670/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1311314050&sr=8-5