The determination of the gravitational potential of a prism plays an important role in physical geodesy and geophysics. However, there are few literatures that provide accurate approaches for determining the gravitati...The determination of the gravitational potential of a prism plays an important role in physical geodesy and geophysics. However, there are few literatures that provide accurate approaches for determining the gravitational potential of a prism. Discrete element method can be used to determine the gravitational potential of a prism, and can approximate the true gravitational potential values with sufficient accuracy (the smaller each element is, the more accurate the result is). Although Nagy's approach provided a closed expression, one does not know whether it is valid, due to the fact that this approach has not been confirmed in literatures. In this paper, a study on the comparison of Nagy's approach with discrete element method is presented. The results show that Nagy's formulas for determining the gravitational potential of a prism are valid in the domain both inside and outside the prism.展开更多
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.40637034, 40974015)the National 863 Program of China (No.2006AA12Z211)
文摘The determination of the gravitational potential of a prism plays an important role in physical geodesy and geophysics. However, there are few literatures that provide accurate approaches for determining the gravitational potential of a prism. Discrete element method can be used to determine the gravitational potential of a prism, and can approximate the true gravitational potential values with sufficient accuracy (the smaller each element is, the more accurate the result is). Although Nagy's approach provided a closed expression, one does not know whether it is valid, due to the fact that this approach has not been confirmed in literatures. In this paper, a study on the comparison of Nagy's approach with discrete element method is presented. The results show that Nagy's formulas for determining the gravitational potential of a prism are valid in the domain both inside and outside the prism.
