Elastic splines. II. Unicity of optimal s-curves and curvature continuity (Q2631952)

Interpolating curves or surfaces or higher-dimensional objects with minimal bending energy are important issues in numerical analysis. Often, research is carried out about the existence and possibly uniqueness of such interpolants. Many approaches have been tried and tested and several of the known approaches use energy-minimising interpolants using for example so-called radial basis functions. The method in this article uses data in the complex plane where curves that interpolate these data and have minimal bending energy are sought. Existence has been established for so-called s-curves, and now the authors have an additional condition restricting the angles of the s-curves. A sufficient condition is found for these curves to exist and to be continuous in curvature. An optimal upper bound of approximately 37 degrees has been identified too for the mentioned angles.