Geodesic distance numerical computation on compliant mechanical parts in the aircraft industry

Abstract

The problem of geodesic distance computation in the Aircraft industry is considered in the paper. While simulating the assembly process, in some computational problems the calculation of the shortest distances between different objects is required. The aim of the work is to compare several approaches to geodesic distance numerical computation on test geometry and some of the most common joints of aircraft. The first considered approach represents graph-based algorithms. In the paper, geodesic distances are calculated in the constructed graph using Dijkstra’s algorithm or its modification with binary heap. The second approach is the fast marching method, which is based on the solution of the Eikonal equation and provides efficient geodesic distance computation on triangulated surfaces.