Re: piecewise integration
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg66968] Re: piecewise integration
- From: "David W.Cantrell" <DWCantrell at sigmaxi.org>
- Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 03:48:41 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <e5tt8l$ebs$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
"Chris Chiasson" <chris at chiasson.name> wrote: > The Integrate result seems pretty weak. Is there any way to obtain a > more explicit exact answer besides manually converting the Piecewise > function to two UnitStep functions? I'm not sure. That's _essentially_ (but not literally) what I'd do. > Can the same be done if the final limit of integration is a variable? Yes. Are you aware that (at least in version 5.1) using variable limits of integration over UnitStep can reveal a bug? For example: In[6]:= Integrate[UnitStep[x],{x,0,3}] Out[6]= 3 In[7]:= Assuming[a<=b,Integrate[UnitStep[x],{x,a,b}]] Out[7]= (b UnitStep[-a]+(-a+b) UnitStep[a]) UnitStep[b] In[8]:= %/.{a->0,b->3} Out[8]= 6 Out[8] doesn't agree with Out[6], which was correct. This discrepancy is caused by Out[7] not being correct in general (even when a<=b). Here's a possible remedy. We define our own unit step: In[9]:= ourUnitStep[x_]:= (Abs[x]/x + 1)/2 In[10]:= Assuming[a<=b,Integrate[ourUnitStep[x],{x,a,b}]] Out[10]= Piecewise[{{-a, a > 0 && b < 0 && a - b >= 0}, {b, b > 0 && a < 0}, {-2*a + b, a > 0 && b < 0 && a - b < 0}, {-a + b, (a == 0 && a - b < 0) || (a >= 0 && b >= 0 && a - b < 0)}}] Messy, but AFAIK, correct whenever a <= b. > in > > load[x_]=-9*10^3*DiracDelta[x]+Piecewise[{{x*10*(10^3/3), > 0<=x<=3}}]-6*10^3*DiracDelta[x-5]//InputForm > > out > > -6000*DiracDelta[-5 + x] - 9000*DiracDelta[x] + > Piecewise[{{(10000*x)/3, 0 <= x <= 3}}, 0] > > in > > Integrate[load[x],{x,0,5}]//InputForm > > out > > Integrate[InputForm[-6000*DiracDelta[-5 + x] - 9000*DiracDelta[x] + > Piecewise[{{(10000*x)/3, 0 <= x <= 3}}, 0]], {x, 0, 5}] Neglecting the DiracDelta terms, In[14]:= Assuming[a<=b, Simplify[Integrate[(x*10*(10^3/3))(ourUnitStep[x]-ourUnitStep[x-3]),{x,a, b}]]] Out[14]= Piecewise[{{15000, b > 3 && a < 0}, {(-(5000/3))*(-9 + a^2), 0 <= a < 3 && b > 3}, {(5000*b^2)/3, a < 0 && 0 < b <= 3}, {(-(5000/3))*(a^2 - b^2), a < b && b <= 3 && (a == 0 || (a < 3 && 0 <= a && 0 <= b))}}] The contributions from the DiracDelta terms can then be added to that. (For some reason, I was unable to get the integral to evaluate if the DiracDelta terms were present.) David