Affine equivalences of surfaces of translation and minimal surfaces, and applications to symmetry detection and design

We introduce a characterization for affine equivalence of two surfaces of translation defined by either rational or meromorphic generators. In turn, this induces a similar characterization for minimal surfaces. In the rational case, our results provide algorithms for detecting affine equivalence of these surfaces, and therefore, in particular, the symmetries of a surface of translation or a minimal surface of the considered types. Additionally, we apply our results to designing surfaces of translation and minimal surfaces with symmetries, and to computing the symmetries of the higher-order Enneper surfaces.publishedVersio

THE PRODUCT DESIGN PROCESS USING STYLISTIC SURFACES

The increasing consumer requirements for the way what everyday use products look like, forces manufacturers to put more emphasis on product design. Constructors, apart from the functional aspects of the parts created, are forced to pay attention to the aesthetic aspects. Software for designing A-class surfaces is very helpful in this case. Extensive quality analysis modules facilitate the work and allow getting models with specific visual features. The authors present a design process of the product using stylistic surfaces based on the front panel of the moped casing. In addition, methods of analysis of the design surface and product technology are presented

Numerical quadrature for Gregory quads

We investigate quadrature rules in the context of quadrilateral Gregory patches, in short Gregory quads. We provide numerical and where possible symbolic quadrature rules for the space spanned by the twenty polynomial/rational functions associated with Gregory quads, as well as the derived spaces including derivatives, products, and products of derivatives of these functions. This opens up the possibility for a wider adoption of Gregory quads in numerical simulations

Geometric Data Analysis: Advancements of the Statistical Methodology and Applications

Data analysis has become fundamental to our society and comes in multiple facets and approaches. Nevertheless, in research and applications, the focus was primarily on data from Euclidean vector spaces. Consequently, the majority of methods that are applied today are not suited for more general data types. Driven by needs from fields like image processing, (medical) shape analysis, and network analysis, more and more attention has recently been given to data from non-Euclidean spaces–particularly (curved) manifolds. It has led to the field of geometric data analysis whose methods explicitly take the structure (for example, the topology and geometry) of the underlying space into account. This thesis contributes to the methodology of geometric data analysis by generalizing several fundamental notions from multivariate statistics to manifolds. We thereby focus on two different viewpoints. First, we use Riemannian structures to derive a novel regression scheme for general manifolds that relies on splines of generalized Bézier curves. It can accurately model non-geodesic relationships, for example, time-dependent trends with saturation effects or cyclic trends. Since Bézier curves can be evaluated with the constructive de Casteljau algorithm, working with data from manifolds of high dimensions (for example, a hundred thousand or more) is feasible. Relying on the regression, we further develop a hierarchical statistical model for an adequate analysis of longitudinal data in manifolds, and a method to control for confounding variables. We secondly focus on data that is not only manifold- but even Lie group-valued, which is frequently the case in applications. We can only achieve this by endowing the group with an affine connection structure that is generally not Riemannian. Utilizing it, we derive generalizations of several well-known dissimilarity measures between data distributions that can be used for various tasks, including hypothesis testing. Invariance under data translations is proven, and a connection to continuous distributions is given for one measure. A further central contribution of this thesis is that it shows use cases for all notions in real-world applications, particularly in problems from shape analysis in medical imaging and archaeology. We can replicate or further quantify several known findings for shape changes of the femur and the right hippocampus under osteoarthritis and Alzheimer's, respectively. Furthermore, in an archaeological application, we obtain new insights into the construction principles of ancient sundials. Last but not least, we use the geometric structure underlying human brain connectomes to predict cognitive scores. Utilizing a sample selection procedure, we obtain state-of-the-art results

Efficient Algorithms for Ortho-Radial Graph Drawing

Orthogonal drawings, i.e., embeddings of graphs into grids, are a classic topic in Graph Drawing. Often the goal is to find a drawing that minimizes the number of bends on the edges. A key ingredient for bend minimization algorithms is the existence of an orthogonal representation that allows to describe such drawings purely combinatorially by only listing the angles between the edges around each vertex and the directions of bends on the edges, but neglecting any kind of geometric information such as vertex coordinates or edge lengths. Barth et al. [2017] have established the existence of an analogous ortho-radial representation for ortho-radial drawings, which are embeddings into an ortho-radial grid, whose gridlines are concentric circles around the origin and straight-line spokes emanating from the origin but excluding the origin itself. While any orthogonal representation admits an orthogonal drawing, it is the circularity of the ortho-radial grid that makes the problem of characterizing valid ortho-radial representations all the more complex and interesting. Barth et al. prove such a characterization. However, the proof is existential and does not provide an efficient algorithm for testing whether a given ortho-radial representation is valid, let alone actually obtaining a drawing from an ortho-radial representation. In this paper we give quadratic-time algorithms for both of these tasks. They are based on a suitably constrained left-first DFS in planar graphs and several new insights on ortho-radial representations. Our validity check requires quadratic time, and a naive application of it would yield a quartic algorithm for constructing a drawing from a valid ortho-radial representation. Using further structural insights we speed up the drawing algorithm to quadratic running time

Design of decorative 3D models: from geodesic ornaments to tangible assemblies

L'obiettivo di questa tesi è sviluppare strumenti utili per creare opere d'arte decorative digitali in 3D. Uno dei processi decorativi più comunemente usati prevede la creazione di pattern decorativi, al fine di abbellire gli oggetti. Questi pattern possono essere dipinti sull'oggetto di base o realizzati con l'applicazione di piccoli elementi decorativi. Tuttavia, la loro realizzazione nei media digitali non è banale. Da un lato, gli utenti esperti possono eseguire manualmente la pittura delle texture o scolpire ogni decorazione, ma questo processo può richiedere ore per produrre un singolo pezzo e deve essere ripetuto da zero per ogni modello da decorare. D'altra parte, gli approcci automatici allo stato dell'arte si basano sull'approssimazione di questi processi con texturing basato su esempi o texturing procedurale, o con sistemi di riproiezione 3D. Tuttavia, questi approcci possono introdurre importanti limiti nei modelli utilizzabili e nella qualità dei risultati. Il nostro lavoro sfrutta invece i recenti progressi e miglioramenti delle prestazioni nel campo dell'elaborazione geometrica per creare modelli decorativi direttamente sulle superfici. Presentiamo una pipeline per i pattern 2D e una per quelli 3D, e dimostriamo come ognuna di esse possa ricreare una vasta gamma di risultati con minime modifiche dei parametri. Inoltre, studiamo la possibilità di creare modelli decorativi tangibili. I pattern 3D generati possono essere stampati in 3D e applicati a oggetti realmente esistenti precedentemente scansionati. Discutiamo anche la creazione di modelli con mattoncini da costruzione, e la possibilità di mescolare mattoncini standard e mattoncini custom stampati in 3D. Ciò consente una rappresentazione precisa indipendentemente da quanto la voxelizzazione sia approssimativa. I principali contributi di questa tesi sono l'implementazione di due diverse pipeline decorative, un approccio euristico alla costruzione con mattoncini e un dataset per testare quest'ultimo.The aim of this thesis is to develop effective tools to create digital decorative 3D artworks. Real-world art often involves the use of decorative patterns to enrich objects. These patterns can be painted on the base or might be realized with the application of small decorative elements. However, their creation in digital media is not trivial. On the one hand, users can manually perform texture paint or sculpt each decoration, in a process that can take hours to produce a single piece and needs to be repeated from the ground up for every model that needs to be decorated. On the other hand, automatic approaches in state of the art rely on approximating these processes with procedural or by-example texturing or with 3D reprojection. However, these approaches can introduce significant limitations in the models that can be used and in the quality of the results. Instead, our work exploits the recent advances and performance improvements in the geometry processing field to create decorative patterns directly on surfaces. We present a pipeline for 2D and one for 3D patterns and demonstrate how each of them can recreate a variety of results with minimal tweaking of the parameters. Furthermore, we investigate the possibility of creating decorative tangible models. The 3D patterns we generate can be 3D printed and applied to previously scanned real-world objects. We also discuss the creation of models with standard building bricks and the possibility of mixing standard and custom 3D-printed bricks. This allows for a precise representation regardless of the coarseness of the voxelization. The main contributions of this thesis are the implementation of two different decorative pipelines, a heuristic approach to brick construction, and a dataset to test the latter

A framework for hull form reverse engineering and geometry integration into numerical simulations

The thesis presents a ship hull form specific reverse engineering and CAD integration framework. The reverse engineering part proposes three alternative suitable reconstruction approaches namely curves network, direct surface fitting, and triangulated surface reconstruction. The CAD integration part includes surface healing, region identification, and domain preparation strategies which used to adapt the CAD model to downstream application requirements. In general, the developed framework bridges a point cloud and a CAD model obtained from IGES and STL file into downstream applications

AutoGraff: towards a computational understanding of graffiti writing and related art forms.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a system that generates letters and pictures with a style that is immediately recognizable as graffiti art or calligraphy. The proposed system can be used similarly to, and in tight integration with, conventional computer-aided geometric design tools and can be used to generate synthetic graffiti content for urban environments in games and in movies, and to guide robotic or fabrication systems that can materialise the output of the system with physical drawing media. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part describes a set of stroke primitives, building blocks that can be combined to generate different designs that resemble graffiti or calligraphy. These primitives mimic the process typically used to design graffiti letters and exploit well known principles of motor control to model the way in which an artist moves when incrementally tracing stylised letter forms. The second part demonstrates how these stroke primitives can be automatically recovered from input geometry defined in vector form, such as the digitised traces of writing made by a user, or the glyph outlines in a font. This procedure converts the input geometry into a seed that can be transformed into a variety of calligraphic and graffiti stylisations, which depend on parametric variations of the strokes

Structural Shape Optimization Based On The Use Of Cartesian Grids

Tesis por compendioAs ever more challenging designs are required in present-day industries, the traditional trial-and-error procedure frequently used for designing mechanical parts slows down the design process and yields suboptimal designs, so that new approaches are needed to obtain a competitive advantage. With the ascent of the Finite Element Method (FEM) in the engineering community in the 1970s, structural shape optimization arose as a promising area of application. However, due to the iterative nature of shape optimization processes, the handling of large quantities of numerical models along with the approximated character of numerical methods may even dissuade the use of these techniques (or fail to exploit their full potential) because the development time of new products is becoming ever shorter. This Thesis is concerned with the formulation of a 3D methodology based on the Cartesian-grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) as a tool for efficient and robust numerical analysis. This methodology belongs to the category of embedded (or fictitious) domain discretization techniques in which the key concept is to extend the structural analysis problem to an easy-to-mesh approximation domain that encloses the physical domain boundary. The use of Cartesian grids provides a natural platform for structural shape optimization because the numerical domain is separated from a physical model, which can easily be changed during the optimization procedure without altering the background discretization. Another advantage is the fact that mesh generation becomes a trivial task since the discretization of the numerical domain and its manipulation, in combination with an efficient hierarchical data structure, can be exploited to save computational effort. However, these advantages are challenged by several numerical issues. Basically, the computational effort has moved from the use of expensive meshing algorithms towards the use of, for example, elaborate numerical integration schemes designed to capture the mismatch between the geometrical domain boundary and the embedding finite element mesh. To do this we used a stabilized formulation to impose boundary conditions and developed novel techniques to be able to capture the exact boundary representation of the models. To complete the implementation of a structural shape optimization method an adjunct formulation is used for the differentiation of the design sensitivities required for gradient-based algorithms. The derivatives are not only the variables required for the process, but also compose a powerful tool for projecting information between different designs, or even projecting the information to create h-adapted meshes without going through a full h-adaptive refinement process. The proposed improvements are reflected in the numerical examples included in this Thesis. These analyses clearly show the improved behavior of the cgFEM technology as regards numerical accuracy and computational efficiency, and consequently the suitability of the cgFEM approach for shape optimization or contact problems.La competitividad en la industria actual impone la necesidad de generar nuevos y mejores diseños. El tradicional procedimiento de prueba y error, usado a menudo para el diseño de componentes mecánicos, ralentiza el proceso de diseño y produce diseños subóptimos, por lo que se necesitan nuevos enfoques para obtener una ventaja competitiva. Con el desarrollo del Método de los Elementos Finitos (MEF) en el campo de la ingeniería en la década de 1970, la optimización de forma estructural surgió como un área de aplicación prometedora. El entorno industrial cada vez más exigente implica ciclos cada vez más cortos de desarrollo de nuevos productos. Por tanto, la naturaleza iterativa de los procesos de optimización de forma, que supone el análisis de gran cantidad de geometrías (para las se han de usar modelos numéricos de gran tamaño a fin de limitar el efecto de los errores intrínsecamente asociados a las técnicas numéricas), puede incluso disuadir del uso de estas técnicas. Esta Tesis se centra en la formulación de una metodología 3D basada en el Cartesian-grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) como herramienta para un análisis numérico eficiente y robusto. Esta metodología pertenece a la categoría de técnicas de discretización Immersed Boundary donde el concepto clave es extender el problema de análisis estructural a un dominio de aproximación, que contiene la frontera del dominio físico, cuya discretización (mallado) resulte sencilla. El uso de mallados cartesianos proporciona una plataforma natural para la optimización de forma estructural porque el dominio numérico está separado del modelo físico, que podrá cambiar libremente durante el procedimiento de optimización sin alterar la discretización subyacente. Otro argumento positivo reside en el hecho de que la generación de malla se convierte en una tarea trivial. La discretización del dominio numérico y su manipulación, en coalición con la eficiencia de una estructura jerárquica de datos, pueden ser explotados para ahorrar coste computacional. Sin embargo, estas ventajas pueden ser cuestionadas por varios problemas numéricos. Básicamente, el esfuerzo computacional se ha desplazado. Del uso de costosos algoritmos de mallado nos movemos hacia el uso de, por ejemplo, esquemas de integración numérica elaborados para poder capturar la discrepancia entre la frontera del dominio geométrico y la malla de elementos finitos que lo embebe. Para ello, utilizamos, por un lado, una formulación de estabilización para imponer condiciones de contorno y, por otro lado, hemos desarrollado nuevas técnicas para poder captar la representación exacta de los modelos geométricos. Para completar la implementación de un método de optimización de forma estructural se usa una formulación adjunta para derivar las sensibilidades de diseño requeridas por los algoritmos basados en gradiente. Las derivadas no son sólo variables requeridas para el proceso, sino una poderosa herramienta para poder proyectar información entre diferentes diseños o, incluso, proyectar la información para crear mallas h-adaptadas sin pasar por un proceso completo de refinamiento h-adaptativo. Las mejoras propuestas se reflejan en los ejemplos numéricos presentados en esta Tesis. Estos análisis muestran claramente el comportamiento superior de la tecnología cgFEM en cuanto a precisión numérica y eficiencia computacional. En consecuencia, el enfoque cgFEM se postula como una herramienta adecuada para la optimización de forma.Actualment, amb la competència existent en la industria, s'imposa la necessitat de generar nous i millors dissenys . El tradicional procediment de prova i error, que amb freqüència es fa servir pel disseny de components mecànics, endarrereix el procés de disseny i produeix dissenys subòptims, pel que es necessiten nous enfocaments per obtindre avantatge competitiu. Amb el desenvolupament del Mètode dels Elements Finits (MEF) en el camp de l'enginyeria en la dècada de 1970, l'optimització de forma estructural va sorgir com un àrea d'aplicació prometedora. No obstant això, a causa de la natura iterativa dels processos d'optimització de forma, la manipulació dels models numèrics en grans quantitats, junt amb l'error de discretització dels mètodes numèrics, pot fins i tot dissuadir de l'ús d'aquestes tècniques (o d'explotar tot el seu potencial), perquè al mateix temps els cicles de desenvolupament de nous productes s'estan acurtant. Esta Tesi se centra en la formulació d'una metodologia 3D basada en el Cartesian-grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) com a ferramenta per una anàlisi numèrica eficient i sòlida. Esta metodologia pertany a la categoria de tècniques de discretització Immersed Boundary on el concepte clau és expandir el problema d'anàlisi estructural a un domini d'aproximació fàcil de mallar que conté la frontera del domini físic. L'utilització de mallats cartesians proporciona una plataforma natural per l'optimització de forma estructural perquè el domini numèric està separat del model físic, que podria canviar lliurement durant el procediment d'optimització sense alterar la discretització subjacent. A més, un altre argument positiu el trobem en què la generació de malla es converteix en una tasca trivial, ja que la discretització del domini numèric i la seua manipulació, en coalició amb l'eficiència d'una estructura jeràrquica de dades, poden ser explotats per estalviar cost computacional. Tot i això, estos avantatges poden ser qüestionats per diversos problemes numèrics. Bàsicament, l'esforç computacional s'ha desplaçat. De l'ús de costosos algoritmes de mallat ens movem cap a l'ús de, per exemple, esquemes d'integració numèrica elaborats per poder capturar la discrepància entre la frontera del domini geomètric i la malla d'elements finits que ho embeu. Per això, fem ús, d'una banda, d'una formulació d'estabilització per imposar condicions de contorn i, d'un altra, desevolupem noves tècniques per poder captar la representació exacta dels models geomètrics Per completar la implementació d'un mètode d'optimització de forma estructural es fa ús d'una formulació adjunta per derivar les sensibilitats de disseny requerides pels algoritmes basats en gradient. Les derivades no són únicament variables requerides pel procés, sinó una poderosa ferramenta per poder projectar informació entre diferents dissenys o, fins i tot, projectar la informació per crear malles h-adaptades sense passar per un procés complet de refinament h-adaptatiu. Les millores proposades s'evidencien en els exemples numèrics presentats en esta Tesi. Estes anàlisis mostren clarament el comportament superior de la tecnologia cgFEM en tant a precisió numèrica i eficiència computacional. Així, l'enfocament cgFEM es postula com una ferramenta adient per l'optimització de forma.Marco Alacid, O. (2017). Structural Shape Optimization Based On The Use Of Cartesian Grids [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/86195TESISCompendi