Divided Differences of Implicit Functions

Under general conditions, the equation $g(x,y) = 0$ implicitly defines $y$ locally as a function of $x$. In this article, we express divided differences of $y$ in terms of bivariate divided differences of $g$, generalizing a recent result on divided differences of inverse functions

Transfinite mean value interpolation in general dimension

AbstractMean value interpolation is a simple, fast, linearly precise method of smoothly interpolating a function given on the boundary of a domain. For planar domains, several properties of the interpolant were established in a recent paper by Dyken and the second author, including: sufficient conditions on the boundary to guarantee interpolation for continuous data; a formula for the normal derivative at the boundary; and the construction of a Hermite interpolant when normal derivative data is also available. In this paper we generalize these results to domains in arbitrary dimension

Optimal spline spaces for L2L^2 nn-width problems with boundary conditions

In this paper we show that, with respect to the $L^2$ norm, three classes of functions in $H^r(0,1)$, defined by certain boundary conditions, admit optimal spline spaces of all degrees $\geq r-1$, and all these spline spaces have uniform knots.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. Fixed a typo. Article published in Constructive Approximatio

Nodal bases for the serendipity family of finite elements

Using the notion of multivariate lower set interpolation, we construct nodal basis functions for the serendipity family of finite elements, of any order and any dimension. For the purpose of computation, we also show how to express these functions as linear combinations of tensor-product polynomials.Comment: Pre-print of version that will appear in Foundations of Computational Mathematic

Gradient bounds for Wachspress coordinates on polytopes

We derive upper and lower bounds on the gradients of Wachspress coordinates defined over any simple convex d-dimensional polytope P. The bounds are in terms of a single geometric quantity h_*, which denotes the minimum distance between a vertex of P and any hyperplane containing a non-incident face. We prove that the upper bound is sharp for d=2 and analyze the bounds in the special cases of hypercubes and simplices. Additionally, we provide an implementation of the Wachspress coordinates on convex polyhedra using Matlab and employ them in a 3D finite element solution of the Poisson equation on a non-trivial polyhedral mesh. As expected from the upper bound derivation, the H^1-norm of the error in the method converges at a linear rate with respect to the size of the mesh elements.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in SINU

Tetrisation of triangular meshes and its application in shape blending

The As-Rigid-As-Possible (ARAP) shape deformation framework is a versatile technique for morphing, surface modelling, and mesh editing. We discuss an improvement of the ARAP framework in a few aspects: 1. Given a triangular mesh in 3D space, we introduce a method to associate a tetrahedral structure, which encodes the geometry of the original mesh. 2. We use a Lie algebra based method to interpolate local transformation, which provides better handling of rotation with large angle. 3. We propose a new error function to compile local transformations into a global piecewise linear map, which is rotation invariant and easy to minimise. We implemented a shape blender based on our algorithm and its MIT licensed source code is available online

Local RBF approximation for scattered data fitting with bivariate splines

In this paper we continue our earlier research [4] aimed at developing effcient methods of local approximation suitable for the first stage of a spline based two-stage scattered data fitting algorithm. As an improvement to the pure polynomial local approximation method used in [5], a hybrid polynomial/radial basis scheme was considered in [4], where the local knot locations for the RBF terms were selected using a greedy knot insertion algorithm. In this paper standard radial local approximations based on interpolation or least squares are considered and a faster procedure is used for knot selection, signicantly reducing the computational cost of the method. Error analysis of the method and numerical results illustrating its performance are given

Pole Dancing: 3D Morphs for Tree Drawings

We study the question whether a crossing-free 3D morph between two straight-line drawings of an $n$-vertex tree can be constructed consisting of a small number of linear morphing steps. We look both at the case in which the two given drawings are two-dimensional and at the one in which they are three-dimensional. In the former setting we prove that a crossing-free 3D morph always exists with $O(\log n)$ steps, while for the latter $\Theta(n)$ steps are always sufficient and sometimes necessary.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

Convexity-Increasing Morphs of Planar Graphs

We study the problem of convexifying drawings of planar graphs. Given any planar straight-line drawing of an internally 3-connected graph, we show how to morph the drawing to one with strictly convex faces while maintaining planarity at all times. Our morph is convexity-increasing, meaning that once an angle is convex, it remains convex. We give an efficient algorithm that constructs such a morph as a composition of a linear number of steps where each step either moves vertices along horizontal lines or moves vertices along vertical lines. Moreover, we show that a linear number of steps is worst-case optimal. To obtain our result, we use a well-known technique by Hong and Nagamochi for finding redrawings with convex faces while preserving y-coordinates. Using a variant of Tutte's graph drawing algorithm, we obtain a new proof of Hong and Nagamochi's result which comes with a better running time. This is of independent interest, as Hong and Nagamochi's technique serves as a building block in existing morphing algorithms.Comment: Preliminary version in Proc. WG 201