Knot removal for parametric B-spline curves and surfaces (Q1100368)

When a spline series is used to represent a function, the nonlinear parameters are the knots of the spline. Hence, for data reduction or efficiency in transmitting information, it is sometimes necessary to remove some of the knots, provided that the resulting spline function is still within a certain given tolerance. This paper studies the knot removal problem for parametric spline curves and tensor-product surfaces. The approximation method is based on best approximation in the \(\ell\) p norm. Several examples are included for illustration. The paper ends with a list of 10 possible applications.