Parametric geometry models for hypersonic aircraft components: blunt leading edges

In this paper we report the results of investigations into the efficient parameterization of blunt leading edge shapes for hypersonic aircraft geometries. The investigations mostly revolve around waverider geometries generated with inverse design techniques, such as the osculating cones waverider forebody design method. The shapes presented however, can be utilized to introduce bluntness to any wedge-like geometry with sharp leading edges. Initially, we present detailed descriptions of three different variations of the rational Bézier curve based parameterization that was developed, and the variety of shapes that can be obtained is demonstrated. Afterwards their performance is evaluated utilizing 2D CFD analysis. In our simulations, the rational Bézier curve leading edges outperform circular ones when it comes to minimizing both drag and peak heating rates or peak temperatures. Additionally, with higher order rational Bézier leading edge shapes, higher levels of geometric continuity can be achieved at the interface between the blunt part and the original wedge-like geometry, resulting in a smoother transition. Preliminary results indicate that this can potentially affect the receptivity and hence transition mechanisms. Finally, the 2D geometry formulations are extended to full 3D waverider forebody geometries

Extensions to OpenGL for CAGD.

Many computer graphic API’s, including OpenGL, emphasize modeling with rectangular patches, which are especially useful in Computer Aided Geomeric Design (CAGD). However, not all shapes are rectangular; some are triangular or more complex. This paper extends the OpenGL library to support the modeling of triangular patches, Coons patches, and Box-splines patches. Compared with the triangular patch created from degenerate rectangular Bezier patch with the existing functions provided by OpenGL, the triangular Bezier patches can be used in certain design situations and allow designers to achieve high-quality results that are less CPU intense and require less storage space. The addition of Coons patches and Box splines to the OpenGL library also give it more functionality. Both patch types give CAGD users more flexibility in designing surfaces. A library for all three patch types was developed as an addition to OpenGL

Arbitrary topology meshes in geometric design and vector graphics

Meshes are a powerful means to represent objects and shapes both in 2D and 3D, but the techniques based on meshes can only be used in certain regular settings and restrict their usage. Meshes with an arbitrary topology have many interesting applications in geometric design and (vector) graphics, and can give designers more freedom in designing complex objects. In the first part of the thesis we look at how these meshes can be used in computer aided design to represent objects that consist of multiple regular meshes that are constructed together. Then we extend the B-spline surface technique from the regular setting to work on extraordinary regions in meshes so that multisided B-spline patches are created. In addition, we show how to render multisided objects efficiently, through using the GPU and tessellation. In the second part of the thesis we look at how the gradient mesh vector graphics primitives can be combined with procedural noise functions to create expressive but sparsely defined vector graphic images. We also look at how the gradient mesh can be extended to arbitrary topology variants. Here, we compare existing work with two new formulations of a polygonal gradient mesh. Finally we show how we can turn any image into a vector graphics image in an efficient manner. This vectorisation process automatically extracts important image features and constructs a mesh around it. This automatic pipeline is very efficient and even facilitates interactive image vectorisation

Hand Drawing in the Definition of the First Digital Curves

The first digitization systems successfully used in curves with origin in mathematical calculations or experimental tests proved useless when they were the result of heuristic methods developed under aesthetic criteria. Renault engineer Pierre Bézier and Citroën engineer Paul de Casteljau found the solution by focusing on the period of ideation of shapes and not on their subsequent translation and integration into the digital domain, studying the working methods of designers and incorporating in the mathematical definition of their curves the own actions of drawing, understood as basic instrumental support in creative processes. This article traces and analyzes the strong relationship between Bézier’s original approach and the procedures driving the manual stroke as the main reason for the consolidation of his graphic proposal as the most effective model for the hand drawing of digital curves and its inclusion since that time and to the present day in the software used by architects

Constrained modification of the cubic trigonometric Bézier curve with two shape parameters

A new type of cubic trigonometric Bézier curve has been introduced in [1]. This trigonometric curve has two global shape parameters λ and µ. We give a lower boundary to the shape parameters where the curve has lost the variation diminishing property. In this paper the relationship of the two shape parameters and their geometric effect on the curve is discussed. These shape parameters are independent and we prove that their geometric effect on the curve is linear. Because of the independence constrained modification is not unequivocal and it raises a number of problems which are also studied. These issues are generalized for surfaces with four shape parameters. We show that the geometric effect of the shape parameters on the surface is parabolic. Keywords: trigonometric curve, spline curve, constrained modificatio

A novel parallel algorithm for surface editing and its FPGA implementation

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophySurface modelling and editing is one of important subjects in computer graphics. Decades of research in computer graphics has been carried out on both low-level, hardware-related algorithms and high-level, abstract software. Success of computer graphics has been seen in many application areas, such as multimedia, visualisation, virtual reality and the Internet. However, the hardware realisation of OpenGL architecture based on FPGA (field programmable gate array) is beyond the scope of most of computer graphics researches. It is an uncultivated research area where the OpenGL pipeline, from hardware through the whole embedded system (ES) up to applications, is implemented in an FPGA chip. This research proposes a hybrid approach to investigating both software and hardware methods. It aims at bridging the gap between methods of software and hardware, and enhancing the overall performance for computer graphics. It consists of four parts, the construction of an FPGA-based ES, Mesa-OpenGL implementation for FPGA-based ESs, parallel processing, and a novel algorithm for surface modelling and editing. The FPGA-based ES is built up. In addition to the Nios II soft processor and DDR SDRAM memory, it consists of the LCD display device, frame buffers, video pipeline, and algorithm-specified module to support the graphics processing. Since there is no implementation of OpenGL ES available for FPGA-based ESs, a specific OpenGL implementation based on Mesa is carried out. Because of the limited FPGA resources, the implementation adopts the fixed-point arithmetic, which can offer faster computing and lower storage than the floating point arithmetic, and the accuracy satisfying the needs of 3D rendering. Moreover, the implementation includes Bézier-spline curve and surface algorithms to support surface modelling and editing. The pipelined parallelism and co-processors are used to accelerate graphics processing in this research. These two parallelism methods extend the traditional computation parallelism in fine-grained parallel tasks in the FPGA-base ESs. The novel algorithm for surface modelling and editing, called Progressive and Mixing Algorithm (PAMA), is proposed and implemented on FPGA-based ES’s. Compared with two main surface editing methods, subdivision and deformation, the PAMA can eliminate the large storage requirement and computing cost of intermediated processes. With four independent shape parameters, the PAMA can be used to model and edit freely the shape of an open or closed surface that keeps globally the zero-order geometric continuity. The PAMA can be applied independently not only FPGA-based ESs but also other platforms. With the parallel processing, small size, and low costs of computing, storage and power, the FPGA-based ES provides an effective hybrid solution to surface modelling and editing

Interpolation of G1 Hermite data by C1 cubic-like sparse Pythagorean hodograph splines

open3siProvided that they are in appropriate configurations (tight data), given planar G1 Hermite data generate a unique cubic Pythagorean hodograph (PH) spline curve interpolant. On a given associated knot-vector, the corresponding spline function cannot be C1, save for exceptional cases. By contrast, we show that replacing cubic spaces by cubic-like sparse spaces makes it possible to produce infinitely many C1 PH spline functions interpolating any given tight G1 Hermite data. Such cubic-like sparse spaces involve the constants and monomials of consecutive degrees, and they have long been used for design purposes. Only lately they were investigated in view of producing PH curves and associated G1 PH spline interpolants with some flexibility. The present work strongly relies on these recent results.embargoed_20220415Ait-Haddou R.; Beccari C.V.; Mazure M.-L.Ait-Haddou R.; Beccari C.V.; Mazure M.-L

Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines and Rational Bezier Triangles for Isogeometric Analysis of Structural Applications

Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) is a major advancement in computational analysis that bridges the gap between a computer-aided design (CAD) model, which is typically constructed using Non-Uniform Rational B-splines (NURBS), and a computational model that traditionally uses Lagrange polynomials to represent the geometry and solution variables. In IGA, the same shape functions that are used in CAD are employed for analysis. The direct manipulation of CAD data eliminates approximation errors that emanate from the process of converting the geometry from CAD to Finite Element Analysis (FEA). As a result, IGA allows the exact geometry to be represented at the coarsest level and maintained throughout the analysis process. While IGA was initially introduced to streamline the design and analysis process, this dissertation shows that IGA can also provide improved computational results for complex and highly nonlinear problems in structural mechanics. This dissertation addresses various problems in structural mechanics in the context of IGA, with the use of NURBS and rational Bézier triangles for the description of the parametric and physical spaces. The approaches considered here show that a number of important properties (e.g., high-order smoothness, geometric exactness, reduced number of degrees of freedom, and increased flexibility in discretization) can be achieved, leading to improved numerical solutions. Specifically, using B-splines and a layer-based discretization, a distributed plasticity isogeometric frame model is formulated to capture the spread of plasticity in large-deformation frames. The modeling approach includes an adaptive analysis where the structure of interest is initially modeled with coarse mesh and knots are inserted based on the yielding information at the quadrature points. It is demonstrated that improvement on efficiency and convergence rates is attained. With NURBS, an isogeometric rotation-free multi-layered plate formulation is developed based on a layerwise deformation theory. The derivation assumes a separate displacement field expansion within each layer, and considers transverse displacement component as C0-continuous at dissimilar material interfaces, which is enforced via knot repetition. The separate integration of the in-plane and through-thickness directions allows to capture the complete 3D stresses in a 2D setting. The proposed method is used to predict the behavior of advanced materials such as laminated composites, and the results show advantages in efficiency and accuracy. To increase the flexibility in discretizing complex geometries, rational Bézier triangles for domain triangulation is studied. They are further coupled with a Delaunay-based feature-preserving discretization algorithm for static bending and free vibration analysis of Kirchhoff plates. Lagrange multipliers are employed to explicitly impose high-order continuity constraints and the augmented system is solved iteratively without increasing the matrix size. The resulting discretization is geometrically exact, admits small geometric features, and constitutes C1-continuity. The feature-preserving rational Bézier triangles are further applied to smeared damage modeling of quasi-brittle materials. Due to the ability of Lagrange multipliers to raise global continuity to any desired order, the implicit fourth- and sixth-order gradient damage models are analyzed. The inclusion of higher-order terms in the nonlocal Taylor expansion improves solution accuracy. A local refinement algorithm that resolves marked regions with high resolution while keeping the resulting mesh conforming and well-conditioned is also utilized to improve efficiency. The outcome is a unified modeling framework where the feature-preserving discretization is able to capture the damage initiation and early-stage propagation, and the local refinement technique can then be applied to adaptively refine the mesh in the direction of damage propagation.PHDCivil EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147668/1/ningliu_1.pd

A multisided C-2 B-spline patch over extraordinary vertices in quadrilateral meshes

We propose a generalised B-spline construction that extends uniform bicubic B-splines to multisided regions spanned over extraordinary vertices in quadrilateral meshes. We show how the structure of the generalised Bezier patch introduced by Varady et al. can be adjusted to work with B-spline basis functions. We create ribbon surfaces based on B-splines using special basis functions. The resulting multisided surfaces are C-2 continuous internally and connect with G(2) continuity to adjacent regular and other multisided B-splines patches. We visually assess the quality of these surfaces and compare them to Catmull-Clark limit surfaces on several challenging geometrical configurations. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd