Deriving The Moment of Inertia of a Hollow Cylinder

Jason Ha
12 April, 2016

Abstract
The Moment of Inertia is defined to be the product of the mass of a point-particle and the square of
its radius. This physical quantity arises when we consider the centre of mass of many uniformly
distributed point particles that make up the object of our concern. In these notes, we shall go through the
pre-amble to the Moment of Inertia and how we derive it. After, we shall discuss and derive and
moment of inertia for different objects with particular focus to the hollow cylinder.

Centre of Mass
Suppose two point-masses, m1 and m2 are situated on a coordinate system, where mass m1 is positioned at the origin. Suppose the distance between the point masses is of displacement d.

We can express this as:

m2 d
m1 + m2
In general, for two point-masses anywhere on the x-axis and not on the origin, we can generalise this to
the follow expression:
m1 x1 + m2 x2
m1 + m2
When considering n-point masses, we can generalise this to the following:
m1 x1 + m2 x2 + ... + mn xn
m1 + m2 + ... + mn
If we let m1 + m2 + ... + mn = M , we and take the summation of the numerator, we obtain the following
1

equation for the x-component of the centre of motion xcom :

n
1 X
mi xi
M
i=1

However, all objects exist in a 3-dimensional coordinate system. So the centre of motion for a pointparticle can have a y-component as well as a z-component. If we let the resultant vector be rcom , then:
rcom =

n
1 X
mi ri
M
i=1

Net Force, Kinetic Energy and Rotational Inertia

The force on a particle in linear motion, preferably in uniform horizontal motion, is given by
Fnet = mcom a
We shall see why in this derivation.
Consider the previous equation which describes the centre of mass of an object composed of point-mass
particles, each a position. Their vector sum, hence, gives rise to the objects centre of motion
rcom

n
1 X
=
mi ri
M
i=1

Should we multiply both sides by the total mass M of the system in concern, we get:
M rcom =

n
X

mi ri

i=1

Differentiating both sides of this expression with respect to time gives:

M vcom =

n
X

mi vi

i=1

Differentiating again with respect to time and we get our required expression:
M acom =

n
X

mi ai

i=1

with which the right-hand side is equal to Fnet .

Similarly, when we talk about the kinetic energy of an object, we would like to think of it as the sum of
all the kinetic energies of the point-mass particles which compose the object in question. Let the total
kinetic energy be K:
1
1
1
1
K = m1 v12 + m2 v22 + m3 v13 + ... + mn vn2
2
2
2
2

Note that we can re-write the right-hand side as a summation from i = 0 to i = n

K=

n
X
1
i=0

mi vi2

However, we cannot use this expression for the kinetic energy of all uniformly-distributed particles in
an object as their linear velocities, v vary.
3

However, in rotation (assuming uniform circular motion), all particles have the same angular velocity, . Therefore, we can re-write the equation as:

K=

n
X
1
i=0

mi vi2 =

n
X
1
i=0

mi ri2

and since is also constant, we can take all known constants out of the equation, which gives us:
n

1 X
K = 2
mi ri2
2
i=0

The summation looks quite familiar and in fact appeared when we derived the centre of motion of a
point-mass particles. This summation is what we call the rotational inertia and its definition was
highlighted in the abstract. We shall call this quantity, I which simplifies our required expression for the
kinetic energy of a system of uniformly distributed point-mass particles in an object:
K = I 2

The Rotational Inertia of a Hollow Cylinder

Let us recall the expression for the rotational inertia of an object:
I=

n
X

mi ri2

i=0

However, this is defined only for the rotational inertia of discretely-positioned particles. For a continuous
distribution of particles, we change this expression into an integral:
Z

r2 dm

I=
0

Suppose we need to find the moment of inertia of a hollow cylinder. The inner radius is given by R1 and
the outer radius is given by length R2 . Let the height of a cylinder be h. This is shown in the following
diagram:

In general, we know that the volume of this entire object, in terms of the inner and outer radii are:
V = (R22 R12 )h

However, we would like to attain a formula for this hollow cylinder in terms of a single radius, r. To
do this, we, find the volume through a different approach. That is, we are going to sum thin cylindrical
shells of the same height and and circumference, but with a infinitesimal width, dr:

Note: dx = h, db = dr, b = r and and V is the axis of rotation

We begin by making a radial cut through the actual hollow cylinder. This allows us to form a rectangular
prism, with length = 2r, width = h and height = dr. The volume of this cylindrical shell is infinitesimal,
so we call it dV . Hence:
dV = 2rh(dr)
Each point-mass particle in the cylinder has a density = dm/dV and note that the density of the entire
cylinder, in general is = M/V . Rearranging the first expression for density gives
dm = dV
Hence, from our initial integral for moment of inertia, we get:
Z

m=M

r2 dV

I=
m=0

Substituting our expression for dV:

Z

m=M

r2 2rh dr

I=
m=0

Notice that , r, and h are also constant, so we can take that out of the integral:
Z

R2

I = 2h

r3 dr

R1

Integrating, we end up with the final expression:

I=

h 4
(R2 R14 )
2

However, recall that V = (R22 R12 )h and since = M/V :

1
I = M (R22 + R12 )
2
5

Implications for this result

Recall that the result we obtained through the integration was:
1
= M (R22 + R12 )
2
The mathematics makes sense but the physical significance maybe unintuitive. Further, consider the
moment of inertia of a disk:
I = M R2
When comparing these two results, we find that if we cut a hole in a disk and rotate both about their
vertical axes, the ring/hollow cylinder requires a lot more rotational inertia than the disk.
In a way, we can see that this is the case since most of the matter is distributed further away and are
concentrated to a much smaller area as opposed to the disk.