Thomas Grandine

A Practical Guide to Splines as used at Boeing

This talk will highlight some of the ways that spline functions have influenced the design and manufacture of air and space vehicles at Boeing during the past 25 years. The two main uses have been as a means of representing design geometry and a method for constructing models of engineering analysis and test data. These two uses have occurred in four different types of engineering applications: geometric modeling applications (e.g. CAD systems), analysis and simulation applications (e.g. splines as finite elements), manufacturing applications, and embedded systems (e.g. navigation and guidance). This talk will show how many of these elements can be combined to solve a very hard engineering design problem.