Method and system for designing smooth surfaces for vehicle parts

A system for designing a smooth surface (13) for a vehicle part covering an area of the surface of its body (11) organized around an axis X, comprising a computer comprising at least one memory and a processor and an executable software residing in the memory of said computer which is able to carry out the following operations together with the computer:

• a) Storing data indicating the profile, the area and the position of a plurality of sectors (15) delimited between said smooth surface (13) and said body (11) by hypothetical planes perpendicular to axis X;
• b) Generating a surface from said starting data by homogenizing the order and the nodal vector of each of the profiles (Pi) of said sectors (15) and applying homotheties to them with origin in their lower point (21) so that their chords (25) are equal;
• c) Modifying N1 equidistant profiles (Py) of the surface generated in the previous operation by applying homotheties to them with origin in a point (23) defining their position with respect to the body (11) until their area (APy) corresponds to that of the profile located in the same position of axis X in a reference area curve (19) made from the starting data such that it defines a smooth distribution of areas along axis X;
• d) Generating a surface from the profiles (Py) resulting from the previous operation and validating that it adjusts to the reference area curve (19) by using N2 equidistant profiles of said surface, where N2>N1. If this is not the case, the previous operation is performed again increasing the value of N1 unless the latter prevents obtaining a smooth surface (13) with the starting data.

A data signal in the form of a digital data flow for designing a smooth surface (13) for a vehicle part covering an area of the surface of its body (11) organized around an axis X in the following steps:

• a) Obtaining data indicating the profile, area and the position of a plurality of sectors (15) delimited between said smooth surface (13) and said body (11) by hypothetical planes perpendicular to axis X;
• b) Generating a surface from the data provided in step a) by homogenizing the order and the nodal vector of each of the profiles (Pi) of said sectors (15) and applying homotheties to them with origin in their lower point (21) so that their chords (25) are equal;
• c) Modifying N1 equidistant profiles (Py) of the surface generated in the previous step by applying homotheties to them with origin in a point (23) defining their position with respect to the body (11) until their area (APy) corresponds to that of the profile located in the same position of axis X in a reference area curve (19) made from the data provided in step a) such that it defines a smooth distribution of areas along axis X;
• d) Generating a surface from the profiles (Py) resulting from the previous step and validating that it adjusts to the reference area curve (19) by using N2 equidistant profiles of said surface, where N2>N1. If this is not the case, step c) is repeated increasing the value of N1 unless the latter prevents obtaining a smooth surface (13) with the data provided step a).