Curvature variation minimizing cubic Hermite interpolants

In this paper, planar parametric Hermite cubic interpolants with small curvature variation are studied. By minimization of an appropriate approximate functional, it is shown that a unique solution of the interpolation problem exists, and has a nice geometric interpretation. The best solution of such a problem is a quadratic geometric interpolant. The optimal approximation order 4 of the solution is confirmed. The approach is combined with strain energy minimization in order to obtain G¹ cubic interpolatory spline.