Comparison of volume and centroid uncertainty of a cylindrical segment by two different methods

Abstract

Some solids are seldom studied analytically, unlike spheres, cylinders, and parallelepipeds. When researchers are interested in them, approximations by discretised meshes and numerical calculations are proposed. One of those is the cylindrical segment, which has applications in novel tilt-based industrial hydrometers. More specifically, the cylindrical segment has two means of being characterized: by measuring the radius, the middle height, and the cutting angle; and by measuring the radius and both the minimum height and the maximum height. In this study, one equation from the literature about the cylindrical segment is corrected, and the two measurement forms are compared, along with their impact on the uncertainty of the volume and barycenter of this solid. Particular results depend on specific input uncertainties, measurements, and objectives. Still, for most cases, it turned out that measuring the minimum and maximum heights generally provides lower uncertainty values for the evaluated calculations, especially the centroids.