Book excerpt: Practicing engineers designing civil engineering structures, and advanced students of civil engineering, require foundational knowledge and advanced analytical and empirical tools. Mechanics in Civil Engineering Structures presents the material needed by practicing engineers engaged in the design of civil engineering structures, and students of civil engineering. The book covers the fundamental principles of mechanics needed to understand the responses of structures to different types of load and provides the analytical and empirical tools for design. The title presents the mechanics of relevant structural elements—including columns, beams, frames, plates and shells—and the use of mechanical models for assessing design code application. Eleven chapters cover topics including stresses and strains; elastic beams and columns; inelastic and composite beams and columns; temperature and other kinematic loads; energy principles; stability and second-order effects for beams and columns; basics of vibration; indeterminate elastic-plastic structures; plates and shells. This book is an invaluable guide for civil engineers needing foundational background and advanced analytical and empirical tools for structural design. - Includes 110 fully worked-out examples of important problems and 130 practice problems with an interaction solution manual (http://hsz121.hsz.bme.hu/solutionmanual) - Presents the foundational material and advanced theory and method needed by civil engineers for structural design - Provides the methodological and analytical tools needed to design civil engineering structures - Details the mechanics of salient structural elements including columns, beams, frames, plates and shells - Details mechanical models for assessing the applicability of design codes