Surface area of circular projection onto hemi-cylinder

calculusgeometryintegration

Suppose we have a circle of radius $r$ and a infinite-length hemi-cylinder of radius $R$.

The arc-length of a sector with chord length $s$ of a circle with radius $R$ can be found through classical geometry to be
\begin{equation}
L(s) = 2R\sin^{-1}\left(\frac{s}{2R}\right)
\end{equation}
Hence, in order to find the total surface area covered by each of these arcs, we need to integrate $L(s)$ over a circle of radius $r.$ The surface area is given by $$A=\int_{-r}^r L(s)\,dx =\int_{-r}^r 2R\sin^{-1}\left(\frac{\sqrt{r^2-x^2}}{2R}\right)\, dx$$

Substitution of $x=r\sin\theta$ yields that
$$A=\int_{-\pi/2}^{\pi/2} 2Rr\cos\theta \sin^{-1}\left(\frac{r\cos\theta}{2R}\right)\, d\theta=4Rr\int_{0}^{\pi/2}\cos\theta \sin^{-1}\left(\frac{r\cos\theta}{2R}\right)\, d\theta$$
To simplify this further, we can define $k=\frac rR$ as the ratio of the radii, to ultimately obtain
\begin{equation}
A=4r^2\cdot\frac 1k \int_0^{\pi/2}\cos\theta\sin^{-1}\left(\frac{k\cos\theta}{\color{red}{2}}\right)\,d\theta
\end{equation}

But as shown in this question MSE 1239687 and after a few simplifications, the area is actually
\begin{equation}
A=4r^2\cdot\frac 1k \int_0^{\pi/2}\cos\theta\sin^{-1}\left(\frac{k\cos\theta}{\color{red}{1}}\right)\,d\theta
\end{equation}

Question: Where did this factor of 2 come from? I'm assuming its from the setting-up of the integral, but how would we fix that?

Best Answer

In your first formula for $A$ you set $s=\sqrt{r^2-x^2}$, but it should be instead $s=2\sqrt{r^2-x^2}$.

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