This is a scalar surface integral, not an oriented flux. Split the whole closed surface into the bottom disc, curved side and tilted top; shared edge curves have zero surface area.
On the bottom, and the integrand is . Its integral over the symmetric disc vanishes by oddness:
On the top, , so . The graph has , , giving . Hence
For the side, let and parametrize by , with . The surface area element is . Thus
Adding all three pieces gives
The tilted top remains above the bottom everywhere because . The calculation is an instance of a scalar surface integral over a cylinder with one tilted cap; reversing a surface orientation would not change any of its terms.
For the scalar surface integral over an obliquely cut cylinder, split the scalar surface integral into the curved cylinder and its two planar caps. Write , so the solid has and . On the curved cylinder, use the parametrization
The surface area element follows from
Consequently the curved contribution is
On either cap , the surface area element is over a radius-two disk. The lower cap has and the upper cap has . Thus
and the complete scalar surface integral is
The surface area element is unsigned: opposite outward normals on the caps do not introduce extra minus signs.
Figure 1.
Original sketch of the solid inside the cylinder between two parallel sloping caps
. Details.
Scalar surface integral 2026-10-25
A scalar surface integral integrates a scalar field against the unsigned surface area element. For a regular parametrization , it is . Reversing orientation does not change it. For example, the scalar surface integral of the constant one is the surface area; a signed flux instead integrates the normal component of a vector field.
Let be the full boundary of , , with . The bottom contribution is zero by symmetry. On the top, the integrand is the constant and the surface area element is . On the side, set and integrate in first: the result is . Integrating from zero to gives the displayed scalar surface integral. No orientation signs enter; a scalar area integral is different from a flux.
Let be the whole boundary of , , where and . On the curved cylinder, the parametrization has surface area element and . Each planar cap has area . Summing the side and both caps gives the scalar surface integral
The surface area element is unsigned; cap orientation does not change the signs of the scalar integrand. This separates the geometric area factor from the field values and avoids mistaking a scalar surface integral for a flux.