Since 2009, when this book was published for the first time, we have been using it in our Biomechanics courses in the educational programme Biomedical Engineering, giving us hands-on experience with the book and the exercises. When we were investigating ideas for a second edition, we found that external reviewers were primarily asking for more examples and exercises, concurring with our own thoughts on the book. Over the years, we have assembled quite a number of examples that were often used to animate the lectures and to illustrate the theory in biomedical applications. At the same time, the number of available exercises increased considerably. Eventually, adding many of these examples and increasing the number of exercises are the most significant changes in the second edition. The major changes in the text are:

The objectives of the book did not change. It is still meant to be a basic training in mechanics, appropriate for our candidate biomedical engineers at Bachelor level, starting with the basic concepts of mechanics and ending with numerical solution procedures. This book differs from most books on biomechanics, which are usually aimed at students with already considerable knowledge in continuum mechanics and wishing to enter the field of biomechanics. Consequently, those books pay great attention to biology and physiology. In contrast, we assume that students start at a very basic level in terms of mechanics, but already have substantial physiological and biological background knowledge.