Discussion on relationship between minimal energy and curve shapes

Abstract

Energy minimization has been widely used for constructing curve and surface in the fields such as computer-aided geometric design, computer graphics. However, our testing examples show that energy minimization does not optimize the shape of the curve sometimes. This paper studies the relationship between minimizing strain energy and curve shapes, the study is carried out by constructing a cubic Hermite curve with satisfactory shape. The cubic Hermite curve interpolates the positions and tangent vectors of two given endpoints. Computer simulation technique has become one of the methods of scientific discovery, the study process is carried out by numerical computation and computer simulation technique. Our result shows that: (1) cubic Hermite curves cannot be constructed by solely minimizing the strain energy; (2) by adoption of a local minimum value of the strain energy, the shapes of cubic Hermite curves could be determined for about 60 percent of all cases, some of which have unsatisfactory shapes, however. Based on strain energy model and analysis, a new model is presented for constructing cubic Hermite curves with satisfactory shapes, which is a modification of strain energy model. The new model uses an explicit formula to compute the magnitudes of the two tangent vectors, and has the properties: (1) it is easy to compute; (2) it makes the cubic Hermite curves have satisfactory shapes while holding the good property of minimizing strain energy for some cases in curve construction. The comparison of the new model with the minimum strain energy model is included.