Modeling a Smooth Surface by a Constrained Biharmonic Equation with Application in Soil Science

Abstract

This paper presents a method for mathematical modelling of surfaces conditioned on empirical data. It is based on solving a discrete biharmonic equation over a domain with given inner point and inner curve data. The inner curve data is used to model boundary values while the inner point data is used for modeling a load vector with the goal to generate a smooth surface. The construction of boundary data is an ill-posed problem, for which a special regularization approach is suggested. The method is designed for surface construction problems with a very limited amount of measured data. In the paper we apply the method by using empirical data of soil thickness and geological maps indicating exposed bedrock regions.