In Sect. 11.3 we have shown how to calculate the volume of solids of revolution. If there is no rotational symmetry, however, one needs an extension of integral calculus to functions of two variables. This arises, for example, if one wants to find the volume of a solid that lies between a domain D in the (x, y)-plane and the graph of a non-negative function . In this section we will extend the notion of Riemann integrals from Chap. 11 to double integrals of functions of two variables. Important tools for the computation of double integrals are their representation as iterated integrals and the transformation formula (change of coordinates). The integration of functions of several variables occurs in numerous applications, a few of which we will discuss.
17.1 Double Integrals
We start with the integration of a real-valued function which is defined on a rectangle . More general domains of integration will be discussed below. Since we know from Sect. 11.1 that Riemann integrable functions are necessarily bounded, we assume in the whole section that f is bounded. If f is non-negative, the integral should be interpretable as the volume of the solid with base R and top surface given by the graph of f (see Fig. 17.2). This motivates the following approach in which the solid is approximated by a sum of cuboids.
Like in Sect. 11.1, the integral is now defined as a limit of Riemann sums. We consider a sequence of grids whose mesh size tends to zero as and the corresponding Riemann sums .
Definition 17.1
Experiment 17.2
Study the M-file mat17_1.m and experiment with different randomly chosen Riemann sums for the function on the rectangle . What happens if you choose finer and finer grids?
As in the case of one variable, one may use the definition of the double integral for obtaining a numerical approximation to the integral. However, it is of little use for the analytic evaluation of integrals. In Sect. 11.1 the fundamental theorem of calculus has proven helpful, here the representation as iterated integral does. In this way the computation of double integrals is reduced to the integration of functions in one variable.
Proposition 17.3
Example 17.4
Definition 17.5
Let D be a bounded domain and R an enclosing rectangle.
- (a)
If the indicator function of D is Riemann integrable then the domain D is called measurable and one sets
- (b)
A subset is called set of measure zero , if .
- (c)
For a bounded function , its integral over a measurable domain D is defined as
Sets of measure zero are, for example, single points, straight line segments or segments of differentiable curves in the plane. Item (c) of the definition states that the integral of a function f over a domain D is determined by continuing f to a larger rectangle R and assigning the value zero outside D.
Remark 17.6
An important class of domains D on which integration is simple are the so-called normal domains .
Definition 17.7
Proposition 17.8
Proof
The statements follow from Proposition 17.3. We recall that f is extended by zero outside of D. For details we refer to the remark at the end of [4, Chap. 8.3].
Example 17.9
17.2 Applications of the Double Integral
Application 17.10
Application 17.11
For the special case of a constant density one obtains the geometric centre of gravity of the domain D.
Example 17.12
17.3 The Transformation Formula
Similar to the substitution rule for one-dimensional integrals (Sect. 10.2), the transformation formula for double integrals makes it possible to change coordinates on the domain D of integration. For the purpose of this section it is convenient to assume that D is an open subset of (see Definition 9.1).
Definition 17.13
A bijective, differentiable mapping between two open subsets is called a diffeomorphism if the inverse mapping is also differentiable.
Proposition 17.14
Example 17.15
Example 17.16
17.4 Exercises
- 1.
-
Compute the volume of the parabolic dome above the quadratic domain , .
- 2.
-
(From statics) Compute the axial moment of inertia of a rectangular cross section , , where .
- 3.
-
Compute the volume of the body bounded by the plane above the domain , .
- 4.
-
Compute the volume of the body bounded by the plane above the domain D, which is bounded by the y-axis and the straight lines , ().
- 5.
-
Compute the geometric centre of gravity of the domain , .
- 6.
-
Compute the area and the geometric centre of gravity of the semi-ellipse
- 7.
-
(From statics) Compute the axial moment of inertia of a ring with inner radius and outer radius with respect to the central axis, i.e. the integral over the domain .
- 8.
-
Modify the M-file mat17_1.m so that it can evaluate Riemann sums over equidistant partitions with .
- 9.
-
Let the domain D be bounded by the curves
- (a)
-
Sketch D.
- (b)
-
Compute the area of D by means of the double integral .
- (c)
-
Compute the statical moments und .
- 10.
-
Compute the statical moment of the half-disk
- (a)
-
as a double integral, writing D as a normal domain of type I;
- (b)
-
by transformation to polar coordinates.
- 11.
-
The following integral is written in terms of a normal domain of type II:
- (a)
-
Compute the integral.
- (b)
-
Sketch the domain and represent it as a normal domain of type I.
- (c)
-
Interchange the order of integration and recompute the integral.