Spherical coordinate reference sheet

Calculating direction cosines from spherical data

(converting spherical to Cartesian coordinates)
Direction
Lines Planes (right-hand rule)
Axis Cosine

North cos α cos(trend) sin(strike) sin(dip)

cos(plunge)

East cos β sin(trend) –cos(strike) sin(dip)

cos(plunge)

Down cos γ sin(plunge) cos(dip)

Table 1: Conversion from spherical to Cartesian coordinates

Matlab function:
[N, E, D] = spherecart(trend, plunge, 1); % lines
[N, E, D] = spherecart(strike, dip, 2); % planes

Calculating spherical data from direction cosines

(converting Cartesian to spherical coordinates)
Lines Planes (right-hand rule)
Data

Direction

Inclination

Table 2: Conversion from Cartesian to spherical coordinates

Matlab function:
[trend, plunge] = cartsphere(N, E, D, 1); % lines
[strike, dip] = cartsphere(N, E, D, 2); % planes

Dot (scalar) product

The dot product between two vectors is a scalar quantity defined by:

Spherical coordinate reference sheet 1

where u and v are vectors, |u| denotes the magnitude (length) of the vectors, and θ is
the angle between the vectors.

In terms of N, E, D components,

Matlab functions (built-in):

udv = dot(u, v); % Determine the dot product
% A few steps to calculate the angle between two vectors
lengthu = sqrt(u(1)^2 + u(2)^2 + u(3)^2);
lengthv = sqrt(v(1)^2 + v(2)^2 + v(3)^2);
theta = acosd(udv/(lengthu*lengthv)); % Angle theta returned in degrees

Cross (vector) product

The cross product between two vectors is a vector. The [N, E, D] components of the
resulting vector are given by:

The cross product vector u × v is always perpendicular to u and v.

Matlab functions (built-in):

ucv = cross(u, v); % Determine the cross product
% Scale the cross product to be a unit vector (length = 1)
lengthucv = sqrt(ucv(1)^2+ucv(2)^2+ucv(3)^2); % Calculate vector length
% Note the “dot­divide” to divide each vector component by the length
ucvunit = ucv./lengthucv; 

Spherical coordinate reference sheet 2