Find fractional area of a circle

areacirclesgeometry

Given a circle of radius $r$ and area $A$, I would like to compute $h$ that is the height of the colored area. That area has area $F$ which is a percentage of the total area of the circle.

To do so, I found that method that uses Netwon's approximations:

iterations = 10

t_1 = (12 F PI)^(1/3)

for(i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
  t_0 = t_1
  t_1 = sin(t_0) - t_0 cos(t_0) + ((2 F PI) / (1 - cos(t_0)))
}

F = (1 - cos(t_1 / 2)) / 2
h = 2 r F
y = r - h

This method seems to work but what does t_1 = (12 F PI)^(1/3) represents?

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Best Answer

Let $t$ be the angle subtending the coloured segment. Then the area of the segment is $(t-\sin{t})\frac{r^2}{2}$.

You want the area to be equal to $F\cdot \pi r^2$.

The $r^2$ cancels, leading to the equation:

$$t - \sin t - F\cdot 2\pi = 0$$

If you let $f(t)=t - \sin t - F\cdot 2\pi$, then $f'(t) = 1 - \cos t$. Applying Newton's method to this function $f(t)$ gives you the iterative step:

$$t_{n+1} = t_n - \frac{f(t_n)}{f'(t_n)}$$ $$= t_n - \frac{t_n - \sin t_n - F\cdot 2\pi}{1 - \cos t_n}$$ $$= \frac{\sin t_n - t_n \cos t_n + F\cdot 2\pi }{ 1 - \cos t_n}$$

Note that the brackets in the OP are incorrect.

Once you've found a good approximation of $t$ (e.g. $t_{10}$), you can calculate the distance from $O$ to the segment as $y=r\cos \frac{t}{2}$, and then the height of the segment as $h=r-y$.

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