9/15/2014 David's Blog: Ellipse by Cylindrical Section

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2012
Ellipse by Cylindrical Section
Ellipses can be created in a couple ways: by passing a diagonal cutting
plane through a right cylinder, or through a right cone. I plan to examine
these methods in the next couple posts.
In this post, I examine the first method: creating an ellipse by taking an
angular cut through a right cylinder of radius r.
When the cutting plane goes through the cylinder at an angle, the surface
created takes the form of an ellipse:
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9/15/2014 David's Blog: Ellipse by Cylindrical Section
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To verify this statement, let's look at the cylinder from the side and affix
the origin of an x-y-z coordinate system to the center line of the cylinder.
Positive x is on the cutting plane, aligned with the long side of the cut.
Positive y is on the cutting plane, aligned with the short side of the cut and
going into the page. Positive z is perpendicular to the cutting plane. is
the angle at which the cutting plane cut through the cylinder, with respect
to the horizontal. See the following image for an illustration of these
properties.
Looking at the section from above, and perpendicular to, the plane of the
section, it appears as illustrated in the following image (the z-axis is
coming out of the page, straight at the viewer):
9/15/2014 David's Blog: Ellipse by Cylindrical Section
http://binnerd.blogspot.ca/2012/11/ellipse-by-cylindrical-section.html 3/5
(Note that the ellipse created in this way is the same as the ellipse created
by projecting a circle onto a plane inclined at the same angle, .)
Numbers will now be assigned to the section, and some numerical results
calculated, to confirm that an ellipse is, indeed, described.
To allow for easy comparison with other ellipses that will be examined, the
semi-major axis, a, will be assigned the value 1. The eccentricity, e, should
be significant enough so that the ellipse is clearly distinguished from a
circle, so it will be assigned the value 0.786151377746. These values, and
other relevant quantities that result from them, follow:
a = 1
e = 0.786151377746
b = r = (1 - e) = 0.618033988764
= 0.904556894284 rad
Now to compute some data points. Keep in mind that x
e
and y
e
are in the
plane of the ellipse.
Start with a value of x
e
in the x
e
-y
e
plane.
Now to calculate the y
e
value at this x
e
point.
Projecting x
e
into the horizontal plane,
x = x
e
cos().
On a circle in the horizontal plane, this x value corresponds to an angle of
= arccos(x/r).
In turn, this angle corresponds to a y-value of y = r sin().
But y = y
e
, so the following expression for y
e
results:
y
e
= r sin[arccos((x
e
cos())/r)]
But cos()/r = 1/a and a = 1, so the expression reduces to
y
e
= r sin[arccos(x
e
)] = r (1 - x
e
)
9/15/2014 David's Blog: Ellipse by Cylindrical Section
http://binnerd.blogspot.ca/2012/11/ellipse-by-cylindrical-section.html 4/5
But r = (1 - e), so the expression can be re-stated as
y
e
= (1 - e) (1 - x
e
)
In fact, this result is the same as the standard equation of an ellipse (but
rearranged):
(x / a) + (y / b) = 1
y = b (1 - x)
(Keep in mind that a = 1)
Therefore,
y = (1 - e) (1 - x)
Apparently, a slice through a cylinder does, indeed, produce an ellipse.
Plugging some numbers into this equation,
for x
e
= 0.05, y
e
= 0.617260962835,
for x
e
= 0.10, y
e
= 0.614936054525,
and so on.
In fact, values for a quarter-section of the ellipse are tabulated in another
blog post:
Blog Post: Ellipse Sample Datapoints
Datapoints computed from the expression for y above are tabulated in the
column under the heading y
e
.


Labels: cylinder, ellipse, elliptical section
posted by David_B | 8:01 PM
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9/15/2014 David's Blog: Ellipse by Cylindrical Section
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