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I am interested in finding an analytical solution for the ratio of the area of a circle within an ellipse to the area of an ellipse.

so the ratio of the magenta area to that of the magenta + cyan area.

My circle's radius will always be between the two half-axis of the ellipse.

I'm sure this would be trivial for many of you but Maths is just not my background so thought I'd ask here rather than spend hours on the problem.

Any advice welcome.

PS: this is not a school problem - I need to use this ratio as a weighting coefficient for something else I'm working on.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Find intersection points and integrate. $\endgroup$
    – user905694
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 9:26
  • $\begingroup$ There is non-calculus solution of the problem using the fact that ellipse is elongated circle. Answer will depend on two numbers $a/r$ and $b/r$. $\endgroup$ Commented May 31, 2022 at 11:29

1 Answer 1

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Assume WLOG that the problem has been re-scaled so that the cirle has radius 1. Also note that by double symmetry we need only consider 1/4 of the figure. Then we have: $$ f(x)=\sqrt{1-x^2}\\ g(x)=a\cdot f(x/b) $$ where $a>1>b$ and $x\geq 0$. The situation looks like this:

enter image description here

The point of intersection will be found via: $$ f(x)=g(x)\\ \iff\\ \sqrt{1-x^2}=a\cdot\sqrt{1-x^2/b^2}\\ \iff\\ 1-x^2=a^2(1-x^2/b^2)\\ \iff\\ (1-a^2/b^2)x^2=1-a^2\\ \iff\\ (b^2-a^2)x^2=b^2(1-a^2)\\ \iff\\ x^2=\frac{b^2(1-a^2)}{b^2-a^2}\\ \iff\\ x=\sqrt{\frac{b^2(1-a^2)}{b^2-a^2}} $$ and then the area of the overlap can be found as: $$ x_0=\sqrt{\frac{b^2(1-a^2)}{b^2-a^2}} \int_0^{x_0}f(x)\ dx + \int_{x_0}^b g(x)\ dx\\ =\\ F(x_0)-F(0)+G(b)-G(x_0) $$ Note how $F(0)=0$ and $G(b)=ab\cdot\frac\pi 4$. Hence the overlap can be reduced to: $$ F(x_0)+ab\cdot\frac\pi 4-G(x_0) $$ Finally, we can use the primitive functions: $$ F(x)=\int \sqrt{1-x^2}\ dx=\frac12\left(x\cdot f(x)+\arcsin(x)\right) $$ and $$ G(x)=\int a\cdot f(x/b)\ dx=a\cdot b\cdot F(x/b) $$

Final summary

Given a circle with radius $r$ and an ellipse with axes $A,B$ compute: $$ \begin{align} a&=A/r\\ b&=B/r\\ x_0&=\sqrt{\frac{b^2(1-a^2)}{b^2-a^2}}\\ ellipse&=ab\cdot\frac\pi 4\\ F(x_0)&=\frac12\left(x_0\cdot\sqrt{1-x_0^2}+\arcsin(x_0)\right)\\ x_1&=x_0/b\\ G(x_0)&=a\cdot b\cdot\frac12\left(x_1\cdot\sqrt{1-x_1^2}+\arcsin(x_1)\right)\\ overlap&=F(x_0)+ellipse-G(x_0)\\ ratio&=overlap/ellipse \end{align} $$

NOTE: here $overlap$ and $ellipse$ values are really only $1/4r^2$ of the actual areas, but for the ratio this will not matter. Otherwise multiply by $4r^2$ if you need actual areas.

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