The generalised Cornu spiral and its application to span generation

A Cornu spiral is a plane curve having a linear curvature profile. This paper considers plane curves having rational linear curvature profiles. These curves are defined to be generalised Cornu spirals (GCS) and are quality curves in the sense that they are continuous and smooth, can contain one inflection at most, and have a bounded and monotonic curvature profile. In addition, the GCS has an extra degree of freedom over the Cornu spiral that is available for shape control. Starting from the intrinsic equation of the GCS, the technique of curve synthesis is used to design a quality curve that can be applied to a wide range of span generation problems.