Surface smoothing with B-spline finite elements (Q1206150)

The paper is concerned with the approximation of scattered data at \(N\) arbitrarily given points in \(\mathbb{R}^ 2\). The problem is solved approximately by using tensor product \(B\)-splines (the so-called \(B\)- spline finite elements) on a rectangular grid in \(\mathbb{R}^ 2\), which covers all given data points. This approach yields a bivariate function which approximates the given data. An optimization type algorithm for the solution of the problem is presented and illustrated by a numerical example, concerning an oil deposit's exploration.