Projected area is the two
dimensional
area measurement of a three-dimensional object by projecting its shape on to an arbitrary plane. This is often used in
mechanical engineering and
architectural engineering related fields, specifically
hardness testing,
axial stress
In mechanics, a cylinder stress is a stress distribution with rotational symmetry; that is, which remains unchanged if the stressed object is rotated about some fixed axis.
Cylinder stress patterns include:
* circumferential stress, or hoop stres ...
, wind pressures, and
terminal velocity.
The geometrical definition of a projected area is: "the rectilinear
parallel projection of a surface of any shape onto a plane". This translates into the equation:
where A is the original area, and
is the angle between the normal to the local plane and the line of sight to the surface A. For basic shapes the results are listed in the table below.
See also
*
Surface area
The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc ...
References
Engineering concepts
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