ELEC/MECH 435: Electromechanical Systems and Devices


There is no shortage of good books covering the topics in this course. The problem is that no one book covers all of the topics in the course. Here is a selection of books which collectively provide a thorough coverage of the material. All of the titles in the first group have been placed on reserve in Fondren Library.

Serious Text and Reference Books

  1. Electric Machinery, Fifth Edition, A. E. Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley, Jr., and Stephen D. Umans, McGraw-Hill, 1990. One of the best "classic" electric machines books in print. Good treatment of magnetic systems, DC motors and AC motors.
  2. Electric Machines and Power Systems, Volume 1: Electric Machines, Syed A Nasar, McGraw-Hill, 1995.
    A condensation of several of Nasar's earlier texts. Major advantage is "low" price ($48.00 from Powells).
  3. Electromechanical Motion Devices, Hi-Dong Chai, Prentice-Hall, 1998. A "neo-classical" electric machines text. Includes DC and stepper motors, voice coils, and permanent magnets, but omits AC motors.
  4. Transducers and Their Elements, Alexander D. Khazan, Prentice-Hall, 1994. An excellent book on sensors. Includes all of the sensor technologies we will cover, and a few more.
  5. Electromechanical Sensors and Actuators, Ilene J. Busch-Vishniac, Springer, 1999. A thorough treatment of device technologies and underlying physics. Includes many modern technologies, but has nothing on motors.

Lighter Fare

These are (relatively) inexpensive paperbacks, containing fewer equations and more pictures than the above books. Their focus is more on application than theory, but generally have good explanations of how devices work.
  1. Electric Motors and Drives, Austin Hughes, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1990. A good treatment of DC, AC, and stepper motors.
  2. Electric Motors and Control Techniques, Irving M. Gottlieb, McGraw-Hill, 1994. Covers DC, AC, and stepper motors, but less thoroughly and with more emphasis on control circuits than Hughes. Something of a hobbyist oriented book, but the price is right.
  3. Electric Motors and their Controls, Tak Kenjo, Oxford, 1991. A bit of a rambling hodge-podge, but at least mentions every type of motor we will cover. Lots of pictures and some interesting application examples.