Integration of Three-Dimensional Reflections from Curved Mirrors Using Computer Algebra Tools

Abstract

This article is a continuation of the study of the process of reflection of various objects from curved mirrors. So, earlier in the works [18; 20], a geometric method of constructing the results of reflections was described, which was implemented mathematically in the article [38] using the principles of analytical geometry [6; 11–14; 30]. The obtained analytical equations of the reflection results were visualized in the Wolfram Mathematica [24] program with the ability to dynamically change the parameters of the mirror and the reflected object. However, in the listed works, only cases of reflection on the plane were considered. In this study, attention is paid to a more complex case — reflection in three-dimensional space. The article considered the reflection of a point from surfaces of the second order: a cylinder, a cone, a single-cavity and double-cavity hyperboloids, a sphere, elliptical and hyperbolic paraboloids, and from a torus — a surface of the fourth order. As before, the reflection result obtained in each of the cases is accompanied by a program code for Wolfram Mathematica, which allows the reader to independently simulate the reflection process with different initial parameters. In addition, the relationships between the results obtained were analyzed — both the relationships between the results of various three-dimensional reflections, and the relationship of the results of three-dimensional reflections with the results of similar plane reflections. In particular, on the basis of this, a hypothesis was formulated about the relationship between the curvature of the Gaussian mirror and the dimension of the object obtained as a result of reflection. Based on the results of the work, conclusions were drawn and prospects for further research were outlined. One of them is to obtain an analytical mechanism for describing complex geometric surfaces using a set of simpler objects. This feature will increase the efficiency of specialists when working with reflections from complex surfaces in areas such as aircraft construction (for creating aerodynamic surfaces and air ducts), medicine [40], shipbuilding [7; 31; 42], etc.