GEOMETRICAL CRITERIA TO GUARANTEE CURVATURE CONTINUITY OF BLEND SURFACES

Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD) of surfaces sometimes presents problems that were not envisioned in classical differential geometry. This paper presents mathematical results that pertain to the design of curvature continuous blending surfaces. Curvature continuity across normal continuous surface patches requires that normal curvatures agree along all tangent directions at all points of the common boundary of two patches, called the linkage curve. The Linkage Curve theorem proved here shows that, for the blend to be curvature continuous when it is already normal continuous, it is sufficient that normal curvatures agree in one direction other than the tangent to a first order continuous linkage curve. This result is significant for it substantiates earlier works in computer aided geometric design. It also offers simple practical means of generating second order blends for it reduces the dimensionality of the problem to that of curve fairing, and is well adapted to a formulation of the blend surface using sweeps. From a theoretical viewpoint, it is remarkable that one can generate second order smooth blends with the assumption that the linkage curve is only first order smooth. The geometric criteria presented may be helpful to the designer since curvature continuity is a technical requirement in hull or cam design problems. The usefulness of the linkage curve theorem is illustrated with a second order blending problem whose implementation will not be detailed here.