Boundary penalty finite element methods for blending surfaces, III. Superconvergence and stability and examples

This paper is Part III of the study on blending surfaces by partial differential equations (PDEs). The blending surfaces in three dimensions (3D) are taken into account by three parametric functions, x(r,t),y(r,t) and z(r,t). The boundary penalty techniques are well suited to the complicated tangent (i.e., normal derivative) boundary conditions in engineering blending. By following the previous papers, Parts I and II in Li (J. Comput. Math. 16 (1998) 457–480; J. Comput. Appl. Math. 110 (1999) 155–176) the corresponding theoretical analysis is made to discover that when the penalty power σ=2, σ=3 (or 3.5) and 0<σ⩽1.5 in the boundary penalty finite element methods (BP-FEMs), optimal convergence rates, superconvergence and optimal numerical stability can be achieved, respectively. Several interesting samples of 3D blending surfaces are provided, to display the remarkable advantages of the proposed approaches in this paper: unique solutions of blending surfaces, optimal blending surfaces in minimum energy, ease in handling the complicated boundary constraint conditions, and less CPU time and computer storage needed. This paper and Li (J. Comput. Math. 16 (1998) 457–480; J. Comput. Appl. Math.) provide a foundation of blending surfaces by PDE solutions, a new trend of computer geometric design.