To the theory of optimal splines

On June 18, 2008 at the Plenary Meeting of the International Conference “Differential Equations and Topology” dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Pontryagin, the report [1] was submitted by Isaev and Leitmann. This report in a summary form included a section dedicated to the research of scientists of TsAGI in the field of automation of full life-cycle (i.e. engineering-design-manufacturing, or CAE/CAD/CAM, or CALS-technologies) of wind tunnel models [2]. Within this framework, methods of geometric modeling [3,4] were intensively developed, new classes of optimal splines have been built, including the Pontryagin splines and the Chebyshev splines [5-8]. This paper reviews some results on the Pontryagin splines. We also give some results on the Lurie splines, that arise in the problem of interpolation of a cylindrical type surface given by the family of table coplanar planes.