(41) Bulk Cylindrical Tank

[Dieter]

(10-13-2018 01:41 PM)David Hayden Wrote:  Thanks Albert, but I think you misunderstand my confusion. I understand the formulas. It's the HP41C program at the end of the paper that I'm having trouble with.

The basic problem (yours as well as mine) is the fact that the program in appendix C is only loosely related to the formulas in chapter 25, including the example in table 25–3. The program expects the hatch height and hatch depth (the latter is not mentioned anywhere before) while there is no input for the radius R that is given in the example. I wonder if R is somehow calculated from the hatch position (cf. line 44...79). The program comment even says that the user enters "...the distances from the hatch to the juice level" (sic!) and not from the bottom – ?!?

What about a completely new program that implements some insights of this thread? I did a version for the HP41 that accepts the tank diameter and the heights of the three tank sections and returns the volume. The units can be metric (centimeters and liters) or imperial (inches and gallons), and the calculation can assume either an elliptical or a shperical dome top. In the latter case the calculated radius R is displayed and may be overwritten by the user. This way you can get the same values as in table 25–3. ;-) Except for the slant bottom part: Here I implemented the formula by Thomas Klemm, which I suppose is the correct one. OK, I used a slightly modified version that works in any angular mode so that the current user setting is maintained.

If someone is interested I'll do some more tests and post it here.

Dieter