Automated Determination of a Package’s Center of Mass

by Ayaz Hemani

Submitted : Fall 2010

The objective for this computer application was to provide a fast, reliable, and efficient method for finding the center of mass of an object, given its density function and general dimensions, in order to assist the United Parcel Service of America with plans to make the delivery of parcels more effective.

In order to address the issue of increasing efficiency with the planning for better parcel shipments, the project of creating an automated computer program was developed through Microsoft Excel. The computer program has made it less time-consuming, more reliable and overall, more efficient to compute center of masses, and moments of masses through an automated program that only requires input.     

Through this automated program, in order to find the mass, center of mass, and moments of mass, it is required for a variable density function to be inputted and for the limits of integration for a given object to be put into the spreadsheet system. Once the required input has been put in, a series of chain calculations with the help of VBA script is able to process the calculation, which is done through integration and a Riemann sum. Furthermore, the foundation of the program can also be used for calculating other physical quantities of interest such as the moment of inertia or surface area of an object.

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