It is pointed out that the semi-classical method of Jennings, Bhaduri and Brack for smoothing the total energy of a system of non-interacting fermions in a potential wellV(r) breaks down in the fourth-order term if this potential is non-monotonic. This means that the method as it stands can only be used by neglecting the Coulomb force on protons. We propose a modified treatment for the fourth-order term which appears to be entirely satisfactory.

The leptodermous expansion of the total ground state energy of a nucleus into volume, surface, curvature and gauss curvature contributions has been studied starting from a semi-classical energy density formalism of extended Thomas Fermi type. A numerical procedure was used to obtain the surface energy and curvature energy contributions from surface moments of energy density profilesH(r) for a sequence of nuclei withN=Z and neglecting the coulomb interaction for the three Skyrme forces. A transition to the liquid drop model type expansion in increasing powers ofA^−1/3 is then made, taking into account the dependence of the central density and the surface structure on the mass of the nucleus. It is found that there is no inconsistency between the curvature contribution to the total energy in the leptodermous expansion and theA^−1/3 term contribution in the liquid drop model expansion. It has been shown that the earlier apparent anomaly between the above two methods arises due to the use of semi-infinite approximation and the mass dependence of the central density and the surface structure of finite nuclei.