Generation of spherical non-uniform rational basis spline curves and its application in five-axis machining

A method of generating spherical non-uniform rational basis spline curves based on De Boor’s algorithm is presented in this article. The spherical curve preserves many good properties from non-uniform rational basis spline curves in Euclidean space, such as local modification property, convex hull property, rotation invariant property, knot insertion property, and so on. Construction of closed spherical non-uniform rational basis spline curve will be discussed too. Furthermore, a progressive iterative approximation scheme is proposed to approximate the given points on unit sphere using spherical non-uniform rational basis spline curves. The convergence and curve continuity will be discussed. Since the analytical expression of the spherical non-uniform rational basis spline curve is messy, numerical differentiation is used to test its continuity at interior knots. Finally, several examples are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed method is applied on tool path generation of five-axis machining to avoid interference by adjusting fewer directions and obtain smooth tool path simultaneously.