Area of curved surface

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David
David on 6 Jul 2015
Commented: yuefeng Yin on 5 Oct 2017
Hi,
I have data points belonging to a surface in 3D. I want to calculate the surface area of it. What are my options? If possible computationally inexpensive solutions are preferred. The way I have done it so far is to fit a plane into the points, project the boundary points onto the plane and calculate the area of the resulting polygon. But I want something more precise. The X and Y data are on a regular grid, the Z data not. All three are floats.
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yuefeng Yin
yuefeng Yin on 5 Oct 2017
Hello,
I am working on a formula to describe the curved surface of a flat material, can you give me some XYZ data, I may calculate the whole surface area?

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Accepted Answer

Harsha Medikonda
Harsha Medikonda on 8 Jul 2015

More Answers (1)

Roger Stafford
Roger Stafford on 8 Jul 2015
In your grid system you should be able to approximate your three-dimensional surface area as the sum of the areas of a set of triangles. If the coordinates of a triangle are P1 = [x1,y1,z1], P2 = [x2,y2,z2], P3 = [x3,y3,z3], its area is:
1/2*norm(cross(P2-P1,P3-P1));

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