How much oil in tank?

Larry C_7

What level of accuracy do you want? Within a gallon, 5 gallons, 25, 50, 1/4 tank, ... ? What are you looking to do with the result?

realolman

How much oil

It's easy to figure how much oil is in a cylindrical tank standing straight up and down... a bit harder in a cylinder on its side, but does anyone know how to determine how much liquid is in a cylindrical tank on it's side with one end jacked up in the air? This has been buggin me and I have not been able to find an answer. I don't know why I didn't think of you folks before.

Jed_2

A cylinder is a cylinder

It doesn't matter what the orientation to calculate the volume. Available, usable gallons is another matter. Not enough detail to determine. Let the tank run dry (heating season is over), call in the delivery truck, fill the tank, and collect the ticket! There's your answer.

Jed

realolman

gallons left

amount left in the tank figured from the fluid level is what I was looking for.

The Wire Nut

That's a triple integral...

... one for the height, and at least another one for the "shape" of the cylinder as a function of the angle. Sounds like a great project for the local BC Calculus AP class or for a student suffering through DiffyQ.

Depending on the angle, the gallon graduations on a vertical stick will be linear until you get into the region where the end-walls start to reduce the top-layer surface area. There, the graduations will widen as tank capacity as a function of height is reduced.

realolman

I hoped someone would

find it at least a little interesting. Whatever anyone would think is a reasonable degree of accuracy . I think calculating for a 275 gallon oil tank oughta be accurate within a coupla gallons. Maybe around 1 percent.


Consantin, would you care to 'splain any of the stuff you just posted I have a little experience with calculus.




Then, I would like to know how to make a spiraled chute. ( helix? ) Can you make it out of a piece of steel or plywood without stretching it? It seems like it oughta be just a big disc with a hole in it

I have looked for this stuff on the web... there are lots of sites, but I've never had any success.


I got two genius ( and wonderful ) kids, one sophomore pre-med, one graduate physics student, you'd think I could get one of them interested, but no.

steve b_26

There is an answer to your question on the Internet

I Googled: volume liquid inclined cylinder , and found this calculator that I think might be able to answer your question http://www.idcomm.com/personal/kc/cylinder.html

Good luck!

realolman

good man

I haven't tried it, but it looks like the thing. Thanks!

Now... about that spiraled chute....

Larry C_8

Spiral chute

What are you trying to move? Do you want the profile of the chute to be vertical, like a right circular cylinder? Can it be tapered like a Christmas tree?

Details are needed.

The Wire Nut

Excellent Link...

... to a page which links to an even more elaborate page describing how to calculate the volume of an inclined cylinder.

As expected, a triple integral, and a nasty one at that. However, since the authors of that page put together a nice little javascript, you don't have to enter that thing into mathematica or solve it yourself, the web page will do it for you.

The next step (i.e. accounting for the usual shape of oil tanks being a combination of a rectangular shape and the two rounded ends) is pretty simple in comparison as long as the angle of inclination is not too great.

Realolman, do you see how the boundary conditions inside that cylinder keep changing? I.e. if you integrate at various levels of "fill", the walls behave in different ways/shapes.

realolman

Absolutely...

I see how hard it is...That's why I'm here ... talking to you... If it was easy anybody could do it.

zeke

Simple

I can't believe this is a real problem. Who would mount a tank that way and how would you measure the depth?

If it is simply academic and you know calculus all you have to
do is perform a triple integration between the end wall, the cylindrical wall and the plane of the liquid free surface.
Do you have a whole summer free for this exercise ?

The Wire Nut

Then...

... I guess we have to agree to disagree. I do not consider a calculation that requires 4 different case/boundary conditions depending on the angle of inclination and the tank fill to be simple (see the link above I provided).

Then again, my share of integrals and diffyQ are pretty much but a long-distant memory at this point. Never had to use most of the stuff in the real world, nor in Engineering.

realolman

OK

Fuggedaboudit. I guess you're right. It is too much trouble for it's usefulness.


Funny thing, though, the "normal" mounting probably is inclined... a little.

But, I am not posting this to argue... Things just become apparent to me and I like to try to understand them. You ARE right. I should probably do something useful. Hmmm... I wonder if visiting this site falls into that catagory.

Glenn Sossin_2

Misc Formulas

Heres a sheet that includes the formula for a cyinder,

Maybe this will help you