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Multi-degree splines are piecewise polynomial functions having sections of different degrees. They offer significant advantages over the classical uniform-degree framework, as they allow for modeling complex geometries with fewer degrees of freedom and, at the same time, for a more efficient engineering analysis. Moreover they possess a set of basis functions with similar properties to standard B-splines. In this paper we develop an algorithm for efficient evaluation of multi-degree B-splines, which, unlike previous approaches, is numerically stable. The proposed method consists in explicitly constructing a mapping between a known basis and the multi degree B-spline basis of the space of interest, exploiting the fact that the two bases are related by a sequence of knot insertion and/or degree elevation steps and performing only numerically stable operations. In addition to theoretically justifying the stability of the algorithm, we will illustrate its performance through numerical experiments that will serve us to demonstrate its excellent behavior in comparison with existing methods, which, in some cases, suffer from apparent numerical problems.

We provide a numerical method to determine the critical lengths of linear differential operators with constant real coefficients. The need for such a procedure arises when the orders increase. The interest of this article is clearly on the practical side since knowing the critical lengths permits an optimal use of the associated kernels. The efficiency of the procedure is due to its being based on crucial features of Extended Chebyshev spaces on closed bounded intervals.

Multi-degree splines are piecewise polynomial functions having sections of different degrees. For these splines, we discuss the construction of a B-spline basis by means of integral recurrence relations, extending the class of multi-degree splines that can be derived by existing approaches. We then propose a new alternative method for constructing and evaluating the B-spline basis, based on the use of so-called transition functions. Using the transition functions we develop general algorithms for knot-insertion, degree elevation and conversion to B\'ezier form, essential tools for applications in geometric modeling. We present numerical examples and briefly discuss how the same idea can be used in order to construct geometrically continuous multi-degree splines.

A piecewise Chebyshevian spline space is good for design when it possesses a B-spline basis and this property is preserved under knot insertion. The interest in such kind of spaces is justified by the fact that, similarly as for polynomial splines, the related parametric curves exhibit the desired properties of convex hull inclusion, variation diminution and intuitive relation between the curve shape and the location of the control points. For a good-for-design space, in this paper we construct a set of functions, called transition functions, which allow for efficient computation of the B-spline basis, even in the case of nonuniform and multiple knots. Moreover, we show how the spline coefficients of the representations associated with a refined knot partition and with a raised order can conveniently be expressed by means of transition functions. This result allows us to provide effective procedures that generalize the classical knot insertion and degree raising algorithms for polynomial splines. We further discuss how the approach can straightforwardly be generalized to deal with geometrically continuous piecewise Chebyshevian splines as well as with splines having section spaces of different dimensions. From a numerical point of view, we show that the proposed evaluation method is easier to implement and has higher accuracy than other existing algorithms.

Given a number of Extended Chebyshev (EC) spaces on adjacent intervals, all of the same dimension, we join them via convenient connection matrices without increasing the dimension. The global space is called a Piecewise Extended Chebyshev (PEC) Space. In such a space one can count the total number of zeroes of any non-zero element, exactly as in each EC-section-space. When this number is bounded above in the global space the same way as in its section-spaces, we say that it is an Extended Chebyshev Piecewise (ECP) space. A thorough study of ECP-spaces has been developed in the last two decades in relation to blossoms, with a view to design. In particular, extending a classical procedure for EC-spaces, ECP-spaces were recently proved to all be obtained by means of piecewise generalised derivatives. This yields an interesting constructive characterisation of ECP-spaces. Unfortunately, except for low dimensions and for very few adjacent intervals, this characterisation proved to be rather difficult to handle in practice. To try to overcome this difficulty, in the present article we show how to reinterpret the constructive characterisation as a theoretical procedure to determine whether or not a given PEC-space is an ECP-space. This procedure is then translated into a numerical test, whose usefulness is illustrated by relevant examples.

In CAGD the design of a surface that interpolates an arbitrary quadrilateral mesh is definitely a challenging task. The basic requirement is to satisfy both criteria concerning the regularity of the surface and aesthetic concepts. With regard to the aesthetic quality, it is well known that interpolatory methods often produce shape artifacts when the data points are unevenly spaced. In the univariate setting, this problem can be overcome, or at least mitigated, by exploiting a proper non-uniform parametrization, that accounts for the geometry of the data. Moreover, recently, the same principle has been generalized and proven to be effective in the context of bivariate interpolatory subdivision schemes. In this paper, we propose a construction for parametric surfaces of good aesthetic quality and high smoothness that interpolate quadrilateral meshes of arbitrary topology. In the classical tensor product setting the same parameter interval must be shared by an entire row or column of mesh edges. Conversely, in this paper, we assign a different parameter interval to each edge of the mesh. This particular structure, which we call an augmented parametrization, allows us to interpolate each section polyline of the mesh at parameters values that prevent wiggling of the resulting curve or other interpolation artifacts. This yields high quality interpolatory surfaces. The proposed surfaces are a generalization of the local univariate spline interpolants introduced in Beccari et al.(2013) and Antonelli et al.(2014), that can have arbitrary continuity and arbitrary order of polynomial reproduction. In particular, these surfaces retain the same smoothness of the underlying class of univariate splines in the regular regions of the mesh. Moreover, in mesh regions containing vertices of valence other than 4, we suitably define G1- or G2-continuous surface patches that join the neighboring regular ones.

A piecewise Chebyshevian spline space is a space of spline functions having pieces in different Extended Chebyshev spaces and where the continuity conditions between adjacent spline segments are expressed by means of connection matrices. Any such space is suitable for design purposes when it possesses an optimal basis (i.e. a totally positive basis of minimally supported splines) and when this feature is preserved under knot insertion. Therefore, when any piecewise Chebyshevian spline space where all knots have zero multiplicity enjoys the aforementioned properties, then so does any spline space with knots of arbitrary multiplicity obtained from it. In this paper, we provide a practical criterion and an effective numerical procedure to determine whether or not a given piecewise Chebyshevian spline space with knots of zero multiplicity is suitable for design. Moreover, whenever it exists, we also show how to construct the optimal basis of the space.