Over the past forty years, the mechanical engineering faculty atURI have authored many textbooks. These editorial contributions have had a major impact on the quality of teaching at URI, and have significantly increased the department’s national and international reputation.
In the 1960s, Professor Hilbert Schenck wrote the first heat transfer textbook to incorporate FORTRAN methods. His Theories of Engineering Experimentation, published by McGraw-Hill, had three editions, and was a widely used laboratory text.

Professor Frank M. White authored three textbooks in the areas of fluid mechanics and heat and mass transfer: Viscous Fluid Flow, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill (one of the most widely used graduate texts in fluids); Fluid Mechanics, 5th edition, McGraw-Hill, (one of the most widely used undergraduate texts in fluids); and Heat and Mass Transfer, Addison-Wesley.
Professor William Palm has written in the areas of control systems, system dynamics, MATLAB, statics, and dynamics. His books include:
• Modeling, Analysis, and Control of Dynamic Systems, 2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1999
• Control Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, 1986
• Introduction to MATLAB 7 for Engineers, McGraw-Hill, 2004 (This is the fourth update of the text that is the most widely used MATLAB text in the world. It has been translated into Italian, Korean, and Chinese.)
Professor Palm also served as special contributor to the fifth editions of Statics and Dynamics by Meriam and Kraige (John Wiley & Sons, 2002). This was the first modern mechanics text, originally published in 1950. After Professor Meriam’s death in 2000, Professor Palm was asked to rewrite certain portions of the texts.
Professors Martin H. Sadd and Arun Shukla have recently completed manuscripts for textbooks that are scheduled for publication in 2004: Elasticity: Theory, Applications & Numerics, M. Sadd, Elsevier Science/Academic Press; and Practical Fracture Mechanics in Design, A. Shukla, Marcell Dekker Inc.
Professor Faghri has authored and edited seven books in the Development in Heat Transfer series that publishes the state-of-the-art in the emerging areas in the field of heat transfer. The overall aim of the series is to bring to the attention of the international community recent advances in heat transfer and to identify the most important areas of heat transfer research. His books include:
• Heat and Fluid Flow in Microscale and Nanoscale Structures, WIT Press, 2004, ISBN:1-85312-666-7.
• Heat Transfer in Gas Turbines, WIT press, WIT Press, 2001, ISBN:1-85312-666-7.
• Modeling of Engineering Heat Transfer Phenomena, WIT Press, 1999, ISBN:1-85312-450-8.
• Computer Simulations in Compact Heat Exchangers, WIT Press, 1998, ISBN:1-85312-448-6.
• Modeling and Simulation of Turbulent Heat Transfer, in press, 2004.
• Transport Phenomena in Fuel Cells, in press, 2005.