integration



On Fri, 2011-02-18 at 09:05 +0100, leon.magiera at wp.pl wrote:
> Given:
>           assume(a>0,b>0);
>          ex:(1-y/b)/(x^2+y^2+z0^2)^(3/2);
>          integrate(integrate(ex,y,-b,b),x,-a,a);
> 
> Is this integration to hard? 
Hi,
to investigate why Maxima is failing, let's include a partial fraction
expansion before the x integration is done:

(%i1) display2d:false$
(%i2) assume(a>0,b>0,notequal(z0,0));
(%o2) [a > 0,b > 0,notequal(z0,0)]
(%i3) ex: (1-y/b)/(x^2+y^2+z0^2)^(3/2)$
(%i4) integrate( ex,y,-b,b );

(%o4) 2*b*sqrt(z0^2+x^2+b^2)/(z0^4+(2*x^2+b^2)*z0^2+x^4
                                  +b^2*x^2)
(%i5) partfrac( %,x );

(%o5) 2*sqrt(z0^2+x^2+b^2)/(b*(z0^2+x^2))
       -2/(b*sqrt(z0^2+x^2+b^2))

(%i6) integrate( %, x);

(%o6) 2*('integrate(sqrt(z0^2+x^2+b^2)/(z0^2+x^2),x))/b
       -2*asinh(x/sqrt(z0^2+b^2))/b

The second fraction was integrated, but we were left with an integral of
the type:

(%i5) integrate( sqrt(x^2+4)/(x^2+1), x );
(%o5) 'integrate(sqrt(x^2+4)/(x^2+1),x)

which seems easy, but it is not. Maxima does not have any method to find
that integral.
Regards,
Jaime