Finding Volume by Rotation

(Integration)
Finding the volume of a solid revolution is a method of calculating the volume of a 3D object
formed by a rotated area of a 2D space. Finding the volume is much like finding the area, but
with an added component of rotating the area around a line of symmetry - usually the x or y
axis.

(1) Recall finding the area under a curve. Find the area of the definite integral

Integrate across [0,3]:

Now, let's rotate this area 360 degrees around the x axis. We will have a 3D solid that looks like
this:
To find this volume, we could take vertical slices of the solid (each dx wide and f(x) tall) and add
them up.

This is quite tedious, but thankfully we have calculus! Since the integrated area is being rotated
around the axis under the curve, we can use disk integration to find the volume. Since the
area is rotated full circle, we can use the formula for area of a cylinder to find our volume.

Volume of a cylinder

We can merge the formula for volume of a cylinder and our definite integral to find the volume
of our solid. The radius for our cylinder would be the function f(x) and the height of our cylinder
would be the distance of each disk: dx

The volume of each slice would be

Adding the volumes of the disks with infinitely small dx would give us the formula

Using our function, we would get this integrand for the volume

Evaluating the integral, we get

We obtained 4Π units3 as our volume. Since our function is linear and the radius is changing at a
constant rate, it is easy to check this by plugging in values to the formula for volume of a cone.
The answers are the same. Since our function was linear and shaped like a cone when rotated
around the x axis, it was okay to use the volume formula for a cone. Many of the volumes we
will be working with are not shaped like cone, so we cannot simply substitute values in the
formula. While algebra can take care of the nice straight lines, calculus takes care of the not-so-
nice curves.

Volume by Rotation Examples

(2) Now lets try rotating the same area around the y axis.

The first rotated solid was integrated in terms x to find the area and rotated around the x axis.
Similarly, this solid is also integrated in terms of x for the area, but it is now rotated around
the y axis. Notice that this solid can be obtained by subtracting a cone with radius 3 at y = 2
from the cylinder formed from radius 3 and a height of 2.
Volume of the Cylinder - Volume of the Cone
 = area revolved around the y axis.

There are three ways to find this volume. We can do this by (a) using volume formulas for the
cone and cylinder, (b)integrating two different solids and taking the difference,
or (c) using shell integration (rotating an area around a different axis than the axis the area
touches). Let's try all three methods.

(a) Using the volume formulas, we would have

The radius for the cylinder and the cone would be 3 and the height would be 2.

The volume is 12Π units3. Let's check it with integration.

(b) When integrating, we find the area from the curve to an axis. Since we are revolving around
the y axis, we need to integrate with respect to y. For the Cylinder, our area before it is rotated
would look like this:
The function of y is f(y) = 3 from [0,2]. Now we can set up our integral.

Now on to the cone. Since it is rotated around the y axis, we need to integrate the original
function with respect to y. All we have to do is solve our original function for x instead of y,
making it a function of y. The function of y would look like this:
The function of y is f(y) = (3⁄2)y from [0,2]. Let's set up our integral.

Now we subtract the volume of the cone from the volume of the cylinder. We get the same
answer.

Finally, let's carry out shell integration.

(c) Notice in disk integration the area was rotated around the same axis that the area was
integrated on. In other words, the axis the area touched was the axis of rotation. In shell
integration, it is the opposite. Notice that the area is touching the x axis and the solid is rotating
around the y axis.
The formula for shell integration is defined as:

where x is the distance to the y axis, or the radius, and f(x) is now the height of the shell.

Simply substituting f(x) will give us

It seems like simply using the volume formulas was the best method, but let's do some different
examples where that isn't the case.

(3) Find the volume of the following function rotated around the x axis from [0,2Π]

The rotated area would look like this:

Unless you know the formula for finding the volume of a vase, we must use integration to find
this volume. We cannot use the formula for any simple three dimensional geometric figures like
the first two examples. Revolving this solid about the x axis, we would do the same as example
(1) and set up an integral using the formula for the volume of a cylinder. The radius of the
cylinder is the curve, so we would plug f(x) in for the radius, and then the height would be dx,
which is from 0 to 2Π.

Volume of a cylinder
The total volume of the solid is 9Π2 units3.

What if we wanted to find the volume of the area rotated around the x axis of the same
function, but with some open space in the middle? This type of figure is called a washer, or a
donut. They are like discs because they are circular, but there is space in the middle.

Consider the same function with f(x) = 1.

When rotated, it will look similar to our previous rotation but with a cylinder removed in the
middle.
To find the volume, we simply take the difference of our original area and the area of the space
in the center.

(4) It could also be beneficial to talk about a solid that is not rotated a full 360 degrees. Think
about a portion of a circle that has been shaded.
This circle has been shaded 240 degrees out of 360. How do we find the area? We simply take a
fraction of the total area, in this case, 240⁄360, or two thirds.

This is the case with volume. If we have a portion of the area rotated, we find out the volume of
the solid out of the total volume if it were rotated 360 degrees.
This solid is also rotated 240 degrees around the x axis. What would the volume be?

This is the volume for the rotated portion of the graph on the interval [a,b].

In the previous examples, we rotated areas about the x or y axis. What if we rotated them about
an arbitrary axis?

When rotating around an axis g(x), we must take into account the change of radius. The
formulas for disk and shell integration will be as follows: