sphericalpolygon 1.2.0

A package to handle the spherical polygon

Welcome to the SphericalPolygon package

The SphericalPolygon package is an archive of scientific routines for handling spherical polygons. Currently, operations on spherical polygons include: Currently, operations on spherical polygons include:

1. calculate the area or mass(if the area density is given)
2. calculate the perimeter
3. identify the location of the centroid
4. compute the geometrical or physical moment of inertia tensor
5. determine whether one or more points are inside the spherical polygon

How to Install

SphericalPolygon can be installed with pip install sphericalpolygon.

How to use

Create a spherical polygon

Spherical polygons can be created based on a self-defined 2d array in form of [[lat_0,lon_0],..,[lat_n,lon_n]] with unit of degrees or a boundary file, such as Plate boundaries for NNR-MORVEL56 model. The spherical polygon has a latitude range of [-90,90] and a longitude range of [-180,180] or [0,360].

>>> import numpy as np
>>> from sphericalpolygon import create_polygon
>>> boundary = np.loadtxt('NnrMRVL_PltBndsLatLon/an',skiprows=1) # boundary for Antarctica Plate
>>> polygon = create_polygon(boundary)
>>> print(polygon.orientation)
Counterclockwise

It shows that the orientation of the spherical polygon are counterclockwise. For more details on attributes and methods of the polygon object, please refer to polygon?.

Calculate the area

Calculate the area(or the solid angle) of a spherical polygon over a unit sphere.

>>> print(polygon.area())
1.4326235943514618

Calculate the area of a spherical polygon over a sphere with a radius of 6378.137km.

>>> print(polygon.area(6378.137), ' km2')
58280032.6500551  km2

Calculate the mass of a spherical polygon with an area density of 81Gt/km2 over a sphere with a radius of 6378.137km.

>>> print(polygon.area(6378.137,81), ' Gt')
4720682644.654464  Gt

Calculate the perimeter

Calculate the perimeter of a spherical polygon over a unit sphere.

>>> print(polygon.perimeter())
6.322665894174974

Calculate the perimeter of a spherical polygon over a sphere with a radius of 6378.137km.

>>> print(polygon.perimeter(6378.137), ' km')
40326.82927827548  km

Identify the location of the centroid

Identify the centroid of a spherical polygon over a unit sphere.

>>> print(polygon.centroid())
[-83.61081032380656, 57.80052886741483, 0.13827778179537997]

Identify the centroid of a spherical polygon over a sphere with a radius of 6378.137km.

>>> print(polygon.centroid(6378.137),' deg deg km')
[-83.61081032380656, 57.80052886741483, 881.9546363470394]  deg deg km

It shows that the latitude of the centroid is close to the South Pole, and the centroid is located about 882km underground.

Compute the moment of inertia tensor

Compute the geometrical moment of inertia tensor of a spherical polygon over a unit sphere. The tensor is symmetrical and has six independent components. The first three components are located diagonally, corresponding to $Q_{11}$, $Q_{22}$, and $Q_{33}$; the last three components correspond to $Q_{12}$, $Q_{13}$, and $Q_{23}$.

>>> print(polygon.inertia())
[ 1.32669154  1.17471081  0.36384484 -0.05095381  0.05246122  0.08126929]

Compute the physical moment of inertia tensor of a spherical polygon with an area density of 81Gt/km2 over a sphere with a radius of 6378.137km.

>>> print(polygon.inertia(6378.127,81)/1e12, ' Gt·Gm2')
[177839.25501653 157466.66651681  48772.37278617  -6830.21381414
   7032.2786668   10893.9188177 ]  Gt·Gm2

Points are inside the polygon？

Determine if a single point or multiple points are inside a given spherical polygon.

single point

>>> print(polygon.contains_points([75,152]))
False

multiple points

>>> print(polygon.contains_points([[-85,130],[35,70]]))
[True, False]

Change log

• 1.2.0 — Mar 20, 2020
  • Added a perimeter() method that calculates the perimeter of a spherical polygon.
  • Added a centroid() method that determaines the centroid location for a spherical polygon.

Reference

Chunxiao, Li. "Inertia Tensor for MORVEL Tectonic Plates." ASTRONOMICAL RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY 13.1 (2016).