Topology recovery technique for complex freeform surface model after local geometry repair

Intersections and discontinuities commonly arise in surface modeling and cause problems in downstream operations.Local geometry repair,such as cover holes or replace bad surfaces by adding new surface patches for dealing with inconsistencies among the confluent region,where multiple surfaces meet,is a common technique used in CAD model repair and reverse engineering.However,local geometry repair destroys the topology of original CAD model and increases the number of surface patches needed for freeform surface shape modeling.Consequently,a topology recovery technique dealing with complex freeform surface model after local geometry repair is proposed.Firstly,construct the curve network which determine the geometry and topology properties of recovery freeform surface model;secondly,apply freeform surface fitting method to create B-spline surface patches to recover the topology of trimmed ones.Corresponding to the two levels of enforcing boundary conditions on a B-spline surface,two solution schemes are presented respectively.In the first solution scheme,non-constrained B-spline surface fitting method is utilized to piecewise recover trimmed confluent surface patches and then employs global beautification technique to smoothly stitch the recovery surface patches.In the other solution scheme,constrained B-spline surface fitting technique based on discretization of boundary conditions is directly applied to recover topology of surface model after local geometry repair while achieving G 1 continuity simultaneously.The presented two different schemes are applied to the consistent surface model,which consists of five trimmed confluent surface patches and a local consistent surface patch,and a machine cover model,respectively.The application results show that our topology recovery technique meets shape-preserving and G 1 continuity requirements in reverse engineering.This research converts the problem of topology recovery for consistent surface model to the problem of constructing G 1 patches from a given curve network,and provides a new idea to model repairing study.     

Grain mapping to freeform surface for machining using parameter-based incremental tracking method

This paper presents a novel method for mapping a texture for machining onto a freeform surface. When a grain texture designed on a 2D plane is projected onto a freeform surface simply, the texture is distorted along the curvature of the surface in the projection direction. Therefore, a method is required to suppress this distortion. The algorithm proposed in this paper rapidly generates a point cloud that represents a texture with less distortion on a simply connected parametric surface. Specifically, four equations that express local geometry constraints instead of conventional parameterization methods are presented to reduce the distortion between adjacent points on the point cloud. Solving these equations can generate grain textures on freeform surfaces. This paper examines two grain images mapped to two freeform surfaces that were prepared as case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Calculation of the unit normal vector using the cross-curve moving mask method for probe radius compensation of a freeform surface measurement

This paper proposes a cross-curve moving mask method to calculate the unit normal vector based on 5 or 9 data points of a freeform surface measurement for probe radius compensation. This is done in order to simplify the calculation and thus, produce a more efficient and time-saving process. Passing through the middle point and 4 or 8 neighboring points, two crossed curves – longitude and latitude can be constructed. The unit normal vector at the middle point can be determined by calculating the cross product of two tangent vectors along these two crossed curves. Different curve fitting methods for the curves passing through 5 or 9 data points, such as Bézier and B-spline methodologies, have been investigated. Three kinds of surfaces, namely, a spherical surface, a cosine-like surface and a shoe-shaped surface (hereby termed “shoe last”) are selected for evaluating the accuracy of the calculated unit normal vectors.     

Calculation of the Normal Vector using the 3 × 3 Moving Mask Method for Freeform Surface Measurement and its Application

The concept of a 3 × 3 moving mask operation image-processing technique is proposed to calculate the normal vector of measuring points in this study. The method developed reduces greatly the calculation time of matrix operation and memory space in comparison with the traditional composite Ferguson-spline method. The methodology for calculating the normal vector is to select eight neighbouring points at equal distances in the vicinity of an arbitrary node on the surface, from which a small surface patch can then be constructed from the nine selected points. Different analytical methods are used to calculate the unit normal vector, namely the Bezier method with uniform parameters and the Bezier method with non-uniform parameters, and are discussed in this study. The accuracy of these two methods in calculating the unit normal vector was also verified by calculating different positions on a spherical surface. The Shepard interpolation method was adopted to interpolate a few control points from a massive number of measured data points to establish the CAD model of a freeform surface using a rectangular grid. The method developed was applied for the measurement of a freeform surface (mouse surface) using a coordinate measuring machine. The local Shepard interpolation method was used to interpolate 16 control points from 1054 measured data points. A bi-cubic Bezier- and B-spline surface CAD model were constructed through these interpolated control points.     

Airfoil profile reconstruction under the uncertainty of inspection data points

A manufactured aero-engine blade is commonly inspected in sections, and its geometric errors are evaluated from the sectional inspection data points. To maintain consistency in evaluating the geometric errors, in particular, the position and twist errors of the stacked blade sections, reconstruction of valid sectional airfoil profiles from the measurement points is preferred. Considering that inspection data points are subject to measurement uncertainty, profile reconstruction via approximation-based curve fitting, rather than interpolation-based curve reconstruction, is adopted in this work. The fitting error of the approximated airfoil profile is deemed equivalent to the measurement uncertainty in the inspection data points. Thus, according to a given measurement uncertainty value, a progressive curve fitting scheme is proposed to generate the airfoil profile that meets the measurement uncertainty constraint. A closed nonperiodic B-spline curve is utilized to model the reconstructed airfoil profile due to its versatility in closed curve approximation. Typical computational tests have been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed airfoil profile reconstruction method, which is in fact generic and can be equally applied to approximating other closed sectional profiles.     

改进遗传算法与拟随机序列结合评定自由曲线轮廓度误差

为了高效率、高精度检测自由曲线和曲面零件并计算轮廓度误差,提出将改进遗传算法与拟随机序列结合来评定自由曲线轮廓度误差.首先,针对自由曲线因没有已知的解析表达式而常用离散点表示其轮廓的特点,采用非均匀有理B样条(NURBS)来表示自由曲线,并用改进遗传算法优化重建自由曲线;然后,应用拟随机Halton序列均匀产生参数值精确计算点到曲线最短距离.阐述了自由曲线重建时控制顶点及目标函数值的计算方法,确立了改进遗传算法重建自由曲线及采用拟随机序列生成参数值求解点到曲线最短距离的具体步骤.最后,针对仿真实例计算并实测零件曲线轮廓度误差.结果显示,自由曲线轮廓度误差评定精度高于99％,表明提出的方法算法简单、计算速度快、精度高,适于在工程计量中推广应用.     

A weighted least square based data fusion method for precision measurement of freeform surfaces

The trend towards product miniaturisation and multi-functionality constitutes a driving force for the application of complex surfaces in many fields such as advanced optics. The precision measurement of these surfaces should be carried out at multiple scales, of which process commonly involves several datasets obtained from different sensors. This paper presents a weighted least square based multi-sensor data fusion method for such measurement. The method starts from unifying the coordinate frames of the measured datasets using an intrinsic feature based surface registration method. B-spline surface is used to fit linear surface model to each identified overlapping area of the registered datasets, respectively. By forming a common basis function, the fitted surface models and the corresponding residuals are then combined to construct a weighted least square based data fusion system which is used to generate a fused surface model. An analysis of the uncertainty propagation in data fusion process is also given. Both computer simulation and actual measurement on various freeform surfaces are conducted to verify the validity of proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed method is capable of fusing multi-sensor measured datasets with notable reduction of the measurement uncertainty.     

A robust surface fitting and reconstruction algorithm for form characterization of ultra-precision freeform surfaces

Ultra-precision freeform surfaces are non-rotational symmetric surfaces possessing sub-micrometer form accuracy and nanometric surface finish. Although they can be fabricated accurately by ultra-precision machining technology, their surface quality is difficult to be characterized. Surface reconstruction is a vital task in the form characterization of ultra-precision freeform surfaces. This paper presents a robust surface fitting algorithm to reconstruct a high fidelity surface from measured discrete points while the surface smoothness can be ensured as well. A fitting threshold named confidence interval of fitting error is proposed to strike the balance between fitting accuracy and surface smoothness in the fitting process. The fitting algorithm is in two steps. In the first step, bidirectional sampling method is developed to extract a curve network from measured points cloud to construct an initial surface. In the second step, the fitting error of the initial surface is minimized to meet the prescribed fitting error threshold. A series of experimental work has been conducted and the results show that the proposed algorithm is able to provide effective means for increasing the accuracy in the form characterization of ultra-precision freeform surfaces.     

Accurate evaluation of free-form surface profile error based on quasi particle swarm optimization algorithm and surface subdivision

Although significant progress has been made in precision machining of free-form surfaces recently, inspection of such surfaces remains a difficult problem. In order to solve the problem that no specific standards for the verification of free-form surface profile are available, the profile parameters of free-form surface are proposed by referring to ISO standards regarding form tolerances and considering its complexity and non-rotational symmetry. Non-uniform rational basis spline(NURBS) for describing free-form surface is formulated. Crucial issues in surface inspection and profile error verification are localization between the design coordinate system(DCS) and measurement coordinate system(MCS) for searching the closest points on the design model corresponding to measured points. A quasi particle swarm optimization(QPSO) is proposed to search the transformation parameters to implement localization between DCS and MCS. Surface subdivide method which does the searching in a recursively reduced range of the parameters u and v of the NURBS design model is developed to find the closest points. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods, the design model is generated by NURBS and the measurement data of simulation example are generated by transforming the design model to arbitrary position and orientation, and the parts are machined based on the design model and are measured on CMM. The profile errors of simulation example and actual parts are calculated by the proposed method. The results verify that the evaluation precision of freeform surface profile error by the proposed method is higher 10%-22% than that by CMM software. The proposed method deals with the hard problem that it has a lower precision in profile error evaluation of free-form surface.     

基于曲面透视投影和内在几何的自由曲面造型

提出基于曲面透视投影和其内在几何的自由曲面造型方法。给出从曲面数据点的透视投影坐标、曲面法矢、切矢及主曲率,计算曲面三维数据点坐标的原理和过程。利用参数双三次样条曲面造型方法,从曲面三维数据点构造了自由曲面。给出的两个算例证明自由曲面初始数据法具有几何意义明显和便于控制的优点。     

基于原始曲面信息的变形网格的曲面重构

为了对有限元分析后的模型进行干涉检查和再分析,需对变形后的网格重建实体模型。基于原始曲面的信息,对变形后的网格进行区域分割,针对分割后的每个特征区域,分别对二次曲面和B-样条曲面采用了不同的重构方法。对于二次曲面,提出了一种基于等参数线的二次曲面参数提取的方法;对于B-样条曲面,给出了一种误差控制的B-样条曲面拟合的多步迭代方法。基于原始模型的拓扑结构,对重构后的曲面进行裁剪缝合得到变形后的实体模型。由于利用了原始曲面信息,使得曲面重构得以简化。实验表明,基于原始曲面信息的曲面重构方法可以快速有效地重构出任意复杂拓扑结构的变形后的曲面。     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Determination of the Optimal Parameters for Freeform Surface Measurement and Data Processing in Reverse Engineering</Emphasis>

One objective of this work is to determine the optimal combination of the probe diameter and grid distance for freeform surface measurement, and another is to determine the optimal parameters for the local Shepard interpolation. The optimal combination of the probe diameter and grid distance for freeform surface measurement was determined through a Taguchi matrix experiment. The smaller the probe diameter and grid distance, the better the accuracy of the surface normal based on the configured matrix experimental result. The optimal parameters, namely the exponent and the radius R, for the local Shepard interpolation were determined by using the minimisation method of the root-mean-square normalised error (RMSNE) between the measured data points and the theoretical data points on a standard steel ball surface. The optimal parameters determined were actually applied to the measurement of a freeform surface (mouse surface) on a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The local Shepard interpolation method was used to interpolate 16 control points from 1054 measured data points. Bi-cubic Bezier- and B-spline surface CAD models were constructed through these interpolated control points.     

Constrained deformation of freeform surfaces using surface features for interactive design

There is an increasing demand in conceptual design for more intuitive methods for creating and modifying freeform curves and surfaces in CAD modeling systems. The methods should be based not only on the change of the mathematical parameters but also on the user's specified constraints and shapes. This paper presents a new surface representation model for freeform surface deformation representation. The model is a combination of two functions: a displacement function and a function for representing an existing NURBS surface called a parent surface. Based on the surface model, the authors develop several novel deformation methods which are named SingleDef (Single-point constraint based deformation method), MultiDef (Multiple-points constraints based deformation method), CurDef (Curve constraints based deformation method) and FeatDef (Feature constraint based deformation method). The techniques for freeform surface deformation allow conceptual designers to modify a parent surface by directly applying point constraints, curve constraint or a surface constraint to the parent surface. The deformation methods are implemented in an experimental CAD system. The results show that designers can easily and intuitively control the surface shape.     

CAD-DIRECTED INSPECTION PLANNING FOR FREEFORM SURFACE USING CONTACT PROBES

A methodology for CAD-directed measurement of freeform surface using a coordinate measuring machine equipped with a touch-trigger probe is presented,mainly including adaptive sampling of measurement points and registration of freeform surface.The proposed sampling method follows four steps: Freeform surface is fitted by bi-cubic B-spline; Curvedness measure of the surface is computed; Given a number of sampling points,an iterative algorithm is constructed for selecting a set of measurement points by employing the curvedness information; The measurement points is regularized for tradeoff between maximizing the measurement accuracy and minimizing the sampling time and cost.The aforesaid algorithm is demonstrated in term of a marine propeller blade.An offset surface registration method is presented to improve alignment accuracy of freeform objects,and Monte Carlo simulation is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method.     

基于实时重构的自由曲面自适应布点方法

针对现有的自适应算法计算量庞大、在工程中可应用性不强的缺陷,提出在等距法布点的基础上,对测量点进行实时重构来指导三坐标测量机根据曲面本身特性自动增加测量点的方法。测量过程中,当通过拟合五次B样条曲线、三次B样条曲面判断现有测量点不满足精度时,利用两侧测量点的曲率半径,计算出需增加测量点的准确位置,重新拟合包含新检测点的检测样本,直到满足精度要求。以曲面样件为例,辅以计算机图形可视化验证该算法,实验结果表明该方法测量精度及重构精度均可满足数字化检测要求,且在工程应用中相比曲率自适应算法其计算量大幅下降,有效提高了曲面检测效率。     

Reverse engineering of compound surfaces using boundary detection method

This paper proposes an efficient reverse engineering technique for compound surfaces using a boundary detection method. This approach consists in extracting geometric edge information using a vision system, which can be used in order to drastically reduce geometric errors in the vicinity of compound surface boundaries. Through the image-processing technique and the interpolation process, boundaries are reconstructed by either analytic curves (e. g. circle, ellipse, line) or parametric curves (B-spline curve). In other regions, except boundaries, geometric data are acquired on CMM as points inspected using a touch type probe, and then they are interpolated on several surfaces using a B-spline skinning method. Finally, the boundary edge and the skinned surfaces are combined to reconstruct the final compound surface. Through simulations and experimental works, the effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed.     

RECONSTRUCTION OF SYMMETRIC B-SPLINE CURVES AND SURFACES

A method to reconstruct symmetric B-spline curves and surfaces is presented.The symme- try property is realized by using symmetric knot vector and symmetric control points.Firstly,data points are divided into two parts based on the symmetry axis or symmetry plane extracted from data points.Then the divided data points are pararaeterized and a symmetric knot vector is selected in order to get symmetric B-spline basis functions.Constraint equations regarding the control points are deduced to keep the control points of the B-spline curve or surface to be symmetric with respect to the extracted symmetry axis or symmetry plane.Lastly,the constrained least squares fitting problem is solved with the Lagrange multiplier method.Two examples from industry are given to show that the proposed method is efficient,robust and able to meet the general engineering requirements.     

基于扫描线数据自由曲面在AutoCAD中的构建

这里提出一种AutoCAD环境下自由曲面的三维重建方法,根据测量得到的三维扫描线数据,通过反算得到控制顶点,用Add3Dmesh方法在AutoCAD中创建双三次B样条曲面实现了自由曲面三维模型的自动重建,提高了自由曲面建模和设计的效率。     

EQUIVALENT NORMAL CURVATURE APPROACH MILLING MODEL OF MACHINING FREEFORM SURFACES

A new milling methodology with the equivalent normal curvature milling model machining freeform surfaces is proposed based on the normal curvature theorems on differential geometry. Moreover, a specialized whirlwind milling tool and a 5-axis CNC horizontal milling machine are introduced. This new milling model can efficiently enlarge the material removal volume at the tip of the whirlwind milling tool and improve the producing capacity. The machining strategy of this model is to regulate the orientation of the whirlwind milling tool relatively to the principal directions of the workpiece surface at the point of contact, so as to create a full match with collision avoidance between the workpiece surface and the symmetric rotational surface of the milling tool. The practical results show that this new milling model is an effective method in machining complex three- dimensional surfaces. This model has a good improvement on finishing machining time and scallop height in machining the freeform surfaces over other milling processes. Some actual examples for manufacturing the freeform surfaces with this new model are given.