When Val and I decided to collaborate and write the first edition, our goal was to produce an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, practical text- book stressing hydraulic design, that could be of hands-on use to the pump designer, student, and rotating equipment engineer. Although feed- back from readers indicates that we achieved our desired goal, we did recognize that we had omitted several important topics. We had said little about the design of chemical pumps and touched only lightly on the ex- tensive range of composite materials and the manufacturing techniques used in nonmetallic pump applications. We had totally ignored the subject of mechanical seals, yet we fully recognized that a.
