This book equips the students with the basic knowledge of certain facets of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics as needed by them in the beginning of their engineering education. The book is primarily tailored to conform to the first-year B.Tech syllabus of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). It will be useful for the students in other universities too.

The first part of the book discusses the fundamentals of civil engineering and the characteristics of some civil structures, such as buildings, roads, bridges, and dams. The second part deals with the topics of engineering mechanics that help in finding the solutions to problems of engineering. It deals with the systems of forces to which rigid bodies are subjected, centroids of plane figures, moment of inertia of some important geometrical figures, and the laws of friction. Worked-out examples, practice problems, and objective-type questions in each chapter are designed to reinforce the learning of the subject matter.About the Author

R. V. RAIKAR, PhD, is Professor of Civil Engineering and Dean, Planning, K.L.E. Society’s College of Engineering and Technology, Belgaum, Karnataka. Dr. Raikar has taught elements of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, strength of materials, fluid mechanics and machines, hydrology, irrigation engineering, and operations research for more than 20 years. His areas of specialization include water resources engineering and sediment transportation. His research interests include fluvial hydraulics, study of flow field near structure using advanced pieces of equipment such as Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV), Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Bubble Image Velocimetry (BIV), hydrology, artificial neural network and genetic algorithm. He has published/presented 35 research papers in international journals and conferences. He is a visiting Professor to National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan.

Dr. Raikar is a member of various bodies such as the Indian Society for Hydraulics, Indian Society for Technical Education, International Association for Hydro-environment Engineering and Research (the Netherlands), International Association for Hydrological Sciences (The Wellingford), and World Association for Sedimentation and Erosion Research (Beijing). He is the reviewer of journals of American Society of Civil Engineers, Flow Measurement and Instrumentation, International Journal of Sediment Research, Water and Maritime Engineering, Journal of Hydro-environment Research and Advances in Water Resources. Dr. Raikar is also a member of various boards of studies and boards of examinations of various universities.