Second Moment of Composite Areas

Calisthenics Sheet
Me En 101 Static Systems in Mechanical Engineering
C. Sorensen | Rev. 0.1

The second moment of area (area moment of inertia) can be found by integration, or it can be found by
the method of adding moments of inertia from individual shapes in order to get the moment of a composite
shape. This handout describes how the parallel axis theorem can be used to allow the addition of moments
of inertia.

1 Composite Shape
By way of example, consider the composite shape shown in Figure 1. This shape can be considered as
consisting of the three rectangles shown in color on the right side of the figure. There are certainly other
ways that we could break the composite shape into simple shapes, but for this example we will use the
indicated decomposition.

y, ft y, ft
16 16
14 14
12 12
10 10 2
8 8
1 3
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 x, ft 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 x, ft

Figure 1: Compound geometry used for this example problem. All dimensions are in feet.

2 Coordinate Systems
There is an infinite number of coordinate systems that could be considered for this problem, but in most
cases there are two coordinate systems for each shape. The first coordinate system for a shape is what we
will call the natural coordinate system. The natural coordinate system generally is aligned with two edges
of the shape. The second coordinate system is the centroidal coordinate system, and is placed so the centroid
of the shape is at the origin of the coordinate system.
For circular shapes, the natural and centroidal coordinate systems are equivalent, so we use only the
centroidal coordinate systems.
The centroidal coordinate system is indicated by a prime (′ ) on the x and y axis labels. The natural coor-
dinate system has no prime. Both the natural and centroidal coordinate systems are shown in the properties
of areas table in the back of the textbook.
Figure 2 shows the natural and centroidal coordinate systems for our example shape. Note that the
natural coordinate system for shape 1 and for the composite shape are the same.
 y, y1 , ft
16
y2′ y3
14 y′
12 y1′ y2 y3′
2
10
x′2
8 x ′
x′3
1 x′1 3
6
x3
4
x2
2
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
x, x1 , ft

Figure 2: Natural and centroidal coordinate systems for this example problem.

3 Area Properties of Individual Shapes

In this section, we find the area, centroid, and centroidal moment of inertia for each of the individual shapes.
In most cases, we find the formulas for the area properties in the table at the back of the book.
We begin by finding the area for each of the shapes. This is straightforward, as the area for a rectangle
is the product of its height and width.
We then find centroid for each of the shapes in the global coordinate system, which is the natural coor-
dinate system for the composite shape. As shown in the properties of areas table in the back of the book,
the coordinates for the centroid of a rectangle in its natural coordinate system are (h/2, b/2). We then add
the global coordinates of the origin of the rectangle’s natural coordinate system to get the global centroid
for the rectangle. The results for each of the rectangle’s centroids are shown in Table 2.
Finally, we find the centroidal moment of inertia using the table in the back of the book. The table shows
that Ix′ = bh3 /12 and Iy′ = hb3 /12. These values are also listed in Table 2.

Table 1: Area Properties for each of the individual shapes

Natural Natural Global

Shape Width Height Area Centroid Origin Centroid Ix′i Iyi′
2 4
1 4 ft 14 ft 56 ft (2, 7) (0, 0) (2, 7) 57.2 ft 4.67 ft4
2 6 ft 12 ft 72 ft2 (3, 6) (4, 4) (7, 10) 583 ft4 286 ft4
3 6 ft 3 ft 18 ft2 (3, 1.5) (10, 6) (13, 7.5) 495 ft4 1410 ft4

We calculate the centroid of the composite shape as an area-weighted average of the centroids of the
individual shapes:
∑ ∑
Ai x̃i (56)2 + (72)7 + (18)13 Ai ỹi (56)7 + (72)10 + (18)7.5
x̄ = ∑ = = 5.82 ȳ = ∑ = = 8.57 (1)
Ai 56 + 72 + 18 Ai 56 + 72 + 18

4 Composite Moment of Inertia

The composite moment of inertia about an axis is the sum of the individual area moments of inertia about
that same axis:
∑ ∑
Ix = Ixi Iy = Iyi (2)

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 However, the area property tables only gives the moment of inertia for an area in its centroidal coordinate
system and its natural coordinate system. So we cannot use those moments of inertia directly. We can use
the parallel axis theorem to find the moment of inertia (Ik ) about an arbitrary axis k for an area A given the
moment of inertia about the parallel centroidal axis (Ik′ ) and the distance (dk−k′ ) between the centroidal
axis and the arbitrary axis:

Ik = Ik′ + Ad2k−k′ (3)

In practice, k will usually have the value x or y. Note that we must use the centroidal axis k ′ . We cannot
apply the parallel axis theorem between any two arbitrary axes.
For our example shape, we can use the parallel axis theorem to find the composite moment of inertia
about any of the axes shown in Figure 2. We will use Table 2 to give us the locations of the centroidal axes,
the areas, and the centroidal moments of inertia for the individual areas.

Table 2: Moment of inertia about an arbitrary axis for the composite shape

Axis k Ik1′ dk−k1′ Ik2′ dk−k2′ Ik3′ dk−k3′ Ik

4 4 4
x 57.2 ft 7 ft 583 ft 10 ft 495 ft 7.5 ft 12100 ft4
y 4.67 ft4 2 ft 286 ft4 7 ft 1410 ft4 13 ft 8490 ft4
x2 57.2 ft4 3 ft 583 ft4 6 ft 495 ft4 3.5 ft 4450 ft4
y2 4.67 ft4 2 ft 286 ft4 3 ft 1410 ft4 9 ft 4030 ft4
x3 57.2 ft4 1 ft 583 ft4 4 ft 495 ft4 1.5 ft 2383 ft4
y3 4.67 ft4 8 ft 286 ft4 3 ft 1410 ft4 3 ft 6090 ft4
x̄ 57.2 ft4 1.57 ft 583 ft4 1.43 ft 495 ft4 1.07 ft 1440 ft4
ȳ 4.67 ft4 3.82 ft 286 ft4 1.18 ft 1410 ft4 7.18 ft 3550 ft4

Note that the closer the axis is to the centroid, the smaller the moment of inertia. The minimum value of
the moment of inertia is the centroidal moment of inertia.
FIXME – ADD SIMPLE PROBLEMS

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