Area and volume properties

Programs to analyze complicated plane geometries and volumes of revolution are provided. Function areaprop computes area, centroidal coordinates, and inertial moments of general shapes having piecewise linear and spline interpolated boundary segments. Regions composed of several parts which may have holes are allowed. Function volprop analyzes volumes generated by rotating an area about the z axis through arbitrary angular limits. The volume, centroidal coordinates, second order moments, and inertia tensor are obtained for the rotated geometry. Typing readme in the workspace discusses the methods used and typing examples runs ten test cases illustrating data preparation and use of the software.

References for this work are “Advanced Mathematics and Mechanics Applications Using MATLAB” by H.B. Wilson, L.H. Turcootte, and D. Halpern and “Principles of Dynamics” by D.T. Greenwood.