How to Find Center of Pressure - Force on Circular Submerged Planar Surface
This underwater planar surfaces example problem includes discussion of the hydrostatic pressure distribution and find the center of pressure in order to solve for torque on a butterfly valve.
If you are using the Elger or Fox textbooks, you’ll find this material in Fluid Mechanics Chapter 3 or if your textbook is authored by Munson or Hibbeler, you’ll find this content in Chapter 2.
Some of the intermediate steps in this hydrostatic force on a plane surface example problem are to first find the hydrostatic force on a plane circular surface which will be at the centroid. Then finding the location of the force on the panel, which requires you to calculate the distance from the centroid to the cp, center of pressure.
The summary of panel equations in this video will provide an overview of Fluid Mechanics force on a panel problems. Force to open a circular hatch problems may seem slightly more difficult than rectangular problems, but should not be confused with the much more difficult “curved surfaces” problems.
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TIMECODES
0:00 Submerged Surfaces Introduction
1:08 Graphical discussion of figure
2:56 Equations – working backwards
5:39 Find P, A, I, y
8:00 Plug-in values to get final answer