Hassan Ugail

Techniques for interactive design using the PDE method

Interactive design of practical surfaces using the partial differential equation (PDE) method is considered. The PDE method treats surface design as a boundary value problem (ensuring that surfaces can be defined using a small set of design parameters). Owing to the elliptic nature of the PDE operator, the boundary conditions imposed around the edges of the surface control the internal shape of the surface. Moreover, surfaces obtained in this manner tend to be smooth and fair. The PDE chosen has a closed form solution allowing the interactive manipulation of the surfaces in real time. Thus we present efficient techniques by which we show how surfaces of practical significance can be constructed interactively in real time.

On harmonic and biharmonic Bézier surfaces

We present a new method of surface generation from prescribed boundaries based on the elliptic partial differential operators. In particular, we focus on the study of the so-called harmonic and biharmonic Bezier surfaces. The main result we report here is that any biharmonic Bezier surface is fully determined by the boundary control points. We compare the new method, by way of practical examples, with some related methods such as surfaces generation using discretisation masks and functional minimisations.

A general 4th-order PDE method to generate Bézier surfaces from the boundary

In this paper we present a method for generating Bezier surfaces from the boundary information based on a general 4th-order PDE. This is a generalisation of our previous work on harmonic and biharmonic Bezier surfaces whereby we studied the Bezier solutions for Laplace and the standard biharmonic equation, respectively. Here we study the Bezier solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equation associated with the most general quadratic functional. We show that there is a large class of fourth-order operators for which Bezier solutions exist and hence we show that such operators can be utilised to generate Bezier surfaces from the boundary information. As part of this work we present a general method for generating these Bezier surfaces. Furthermore, we show that some of the existing techniques for boundary based surface design, such as Coons patches and Bloor-Wilson PDE method, are indeed particular cases of the generalised framework we present here.

Gender Classification Based on 3D Face Geometry Features Using SVM

In this work we have used non-linear Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for gender classification. The SVMis applied to triangular meshes representing human faces. In this work we rely on handful of 3-dimentional facial features which are extracted from the corresponding geometry meshes. The experimental results show that in our method the error rate is 17.44% on average. It is thought that the approach used to determine gender prior to face recognition would make an automatic face recognition system more efficient.

Manipulation of PDE surfaces using an interactively defined parameterisation

Abstract Manipulation of PDE surfaces using a set of interactively defined parameters is considered. The PDE method treats surface design as a boundary-value problem and ensures that surfaces can be defined using an appropriately chosen set of boundary conditions and design parameters. Here we show how the data input to the system, from a user interface such as the mouse of a computer terminal, can be efficiently used to define a set of parameters with which to manipulate the surface interactively in real time.

Efficient Shape Parametrisation for Automatic Design Optimisation using a Partial Differential Equation Formulation

Abstract This paper presents a methodology for efficient shape parametrisation for automatic design optimisation using a partial differential equation (PDE) formulation. It is shown how the choice of an elliptic PDE enables one to define and parametrise geometries corresponding to complex shapes. By using the PDE formulation it is shown how the shape definition and parametrisation can be based on a boundary value approach by which complex shapes can be created and parametrised based on the shape information at the boundaries or the character lines defining the shape. Furthermore, this approach to shape definition allows complex shapes to be parametrised intuitively using a very small set of design parameters. Thus, it is shown that the PDE based approach to shape parametrisation when combined with a standard method for numerical optimisation is capable of setting up automatic design optimisation problems allowing practical design optimisation to be more feasible.

A survey of partial differential equations in geometric design

Computer-aided geometric design is an area where the improvement of surface generation techniques is an everlasting demand, since faster and more accurate geometric models are required. Traditional methods for generating surfaces were initially mainly based upon interpolation algorithms. Recently, partial differential equations (PDE) were introduced as a valuable tool for geometric modelling, since they offer a number of features from which these areas can benefit. This work summarizes the uses given to PDE surfaces as a surface generation technique together with some other applications to computer graphics.

Interactive design using higher order PDEs

This paper extends the PDE method of surface generation. The governing partial differential equation is generalised to sixth order to increase its flexibility. The PDE is solved analytically, even in the case of general boundary conditions, making the method fast. The boundary conditions, which control the surface shape, are specified interactively, allowing intuitive manipulation of generic shapes. A compact user interface is presented which makes use of direct manipulation and other techniques for 3D interaction.

Method of modelling the compaction behaviour of cylindrical pharmaceutical tablets

The mechanisms involved for compaction of pharmaceutical powders have become a crucial step in the development cycle for robust tablet design with required properties. Compressibility of pharmaceutical materials is measured by a force-displacement relationship which is commonly analysed using a well known method, the Heckel model. This model requires the true density and compacted powder mass value to determine the powder mean yield pressure. In this paper, we present a technique for shape modelling of pharmaceutical tablets based on the use of partial differential equations (PDEs). This work also presents an extended formulation of the PDE method to a higher dimensional space by increasing the number of parameters responsible for describing the surface in order to generate a solid tablet. Furthermore, the volume and the surface area of the parametric cylindrical tablet have been estimated numerically. Finally, the solution of the axisymmetric boundary value problem for a finite cylinder subject to a uniform axial load has been utilised in order to model the displacement components of a compressed PDE-based representation of a tablet. The Heckel plot obtained from the developed model shows that the model is capable of predicting the compaction behaviour of pharmaceutical materials since it fits the experimental data accurately.

Spine based shape parameterisation for PDE surfaces

The aim of this paper is to show how the spine of a PDE surface can be generated and how it can be used to efficiently parameterise a PDE surface. For the purpose of the work presented here an approximate analytic solution form for the chosen PDE is utilised. It is shown that the spine of the PDE surface is then computed as a by-product of this analytic solution. Furthermore, it is shown that a parameterisation can be introduced on the spine enabling intuitive manipulation of PDE surfaces.