1. Introduction
Surfaces in the Euclidean three-dimensional space that satisfy particularly nice properties regarding their intrinsic or extrinsic curvatures have always been of interest. Surfaces with the constant mean curvature (CMC) H are a natural generalization of the minimal surfaces, where . While the minimal surfaces are those that minimize area with some fixed boundary, and may be regarded as those that correspond to zero pressure difference, a proper CMC surface corresponds to a non-zero pressure difference, and as such, has wide applications in physics, chemistry, engineering, and architecture, in particular for air-supported constructions. Surfaces that are moreover invariant for some group of transformations, as rotational surfaces and their generalization, helicoidal surfaces, are, may also be applied in engineering design and computer graphics.
The rotational surfaces with constant mean curvature (CMC) are well known and were first described by Delauney; see [
1]. The notion of helicoidal surfaces has also been known for a long time. They represent a natural generalization of rotational surfaces and they are, roughly speaking, generated by simultaneously rotating and translating a regular planar curve (called a profile curve) around a fixed line (called an axis) that lies in that given plane, in such a manner that the speed of translation is proportional to the angular velocity of rotation (such motion is called a screw motion). It is, therefore, quite interesting that the classification of the helicoidal CMC surfaces with non-zero mean curvature was given almost 150 years later, by Do Carmo and Dajczer in [
2]. Moreover, using their approach, the minimal helicoidal surfaces were given in [
3]. Interestingly, to obtain the classification in [
2], the authors used Bour’s theorem [
4], which proves that for any helicoidal surface, regardless of the mean curvature, there exists a two-parameter family of helicoidal surfaces which are mutually isometric to it and containing a rotational surface as a special case of a helicoidal surface. Further, the authors used the existence of such Bour’s families to extrapolate, in a effective and clever manner, the CMC helicoidal surfaces by showing that for any such surface, there exists a family of CMC helicoidal surfaces isometric to it, all with the same mean curvature.
However, as a result, these surfaces are described in terms of somewhat complicated integrals, involving functions which are mostly arbitrary, with a few additional properties, such as smoothness, for instance. As an immediate practical consequence, it turns out that not many examples of such surfaces are yet visualized. In this paper, we use the methods given in [
2]. Particular calculations, which straightforwardly follow [
2], were performed in [
5]. However, the aim was to present the examples of such CMC surfaces obtained in different moments of a certain isometric deformation of rotational surfaces, by using the family parameter as time. This imposed the condition to present the expressions in order to depend smoothly over the parameter and, further, in some of the expressions, taking some of the terms with both positive and negative sign. Moreover, for particular choices of the constant
defining the family, we provide a visualization of examples of such CMC helicoidal families and present here their elements at particular moments.
In this paper, we choose the
-axis for the axis of helicoidal motion, and as we will focus on regular surfaces, the profile curve will be a regular curve
where
is a positive function. If we introduce a value
(called pitch) that represents the height difference between any point and its image after screw motion in a unit of time, we see that we can formally define the screw motion of a profile curve by
Therefore, a helicoidal surface of the pitch
h is given in its parametric form by:
In particular, the curves of the form are called the helices on . Obviously, for , we obtain rotational surfaces.
2. Delauney’s Surfaces
En route to classification of helicoidal CMC surfaces, the first step was to describe rotational CMC surfaces (also known as the Delauney surfaces). Kenmotsu in [
6] approached the problem by deriving the equation for mean curvature of a rotational surface, that, in general, is not constant. If we assume that the profile curve of a rotational surface is a naturally parameterized
-curve
where
, we obtain a differential equation whose mean curvature
must satisfy:
Multiplying the previous equation with
and
, respectively, along with the fact that the profile curve is parameterized by a natural parameter, yields the following equations:
which combined produce the following ODE:
If we define the following complex function
, Equation (
2) becomes a first-order linear ODE
which is easily solvable and gives us the three-parameter family of profile curves for a rotational surface with mean curvature
:
where the functions
and
are defined as:
Firstly, we wish to see what are the minimal rotational surfaces, that is, what happens when
is equal to zero. In that case, the aforementioned three-parameter family comes down to
and that is a part of a plane (for
), or a catenoid. In the remaining cases, by properly choosing the sign of the normal vector field, we may assume that
. If we introduce a positive constant
and apply adequate translations, the profile curve (
4) becomes
In [
6], it was shown that possible rotational surfaces that can be generated by these profile curves are:
Cylindrical surfaces, for .
Spherical surfaces, for .
Parts of an unduloid, for .
Parts of a nodoid, for .
All of the previous observations are summarized in the following theorem:
Theorem 1. (Delauney) Rotational surfaces with the constant non-zero mean curvature are cylindrical or spherical surfaces or parts of an unduloid or a nodoid. Only minimal rotational surfaces are parts of planes and catenoids.
Remark 1. One way of visualizing non-minimal Delauney surfaces is through a deformation with a fixed mean curvature, where we interpret the parameter as time, and through its continuous movement we obtain all of the non-minimal Delauney surfaces with a fixed mean curvature H.
We may demonstrate the previous considerations for the Delauney surfaces of mean curvature and ; see Figure 1. 4. Helicoidal CMC Surfaces
Although the elements of Bour’s family in general do not have the same, let alone constant, mean curvature, the main benefit of the existence of Bour’s family is in effective extrapolation of helicoidal CMC surfaces from it. Since we know the coefficients of the first and the second fundamental form of the Bour’s family elements, the next claim follows directly.
Theorem 3. The helicoidal surface of Bour’s family , with the pitch h and constant m, has a constant mean curvature H if and only if it satisfies the following ODE: For non-negative functions,
Equation (
26) reduces to:
By differentiating the second equation in (
27), we obtain that
, which further reduces (
26) to
or
with the solution
Let us find minimal helicoidal surfaces. From
, we obtain that
. From (
27), we have
By substituting , we straightforwardly obtain and by possible translation in the domain of , we may take .
Now, by taking (
23), we see that in the case of
, we obtain helicoids
In the case that
, we obtain that
and up to a constant
Hence, we obtain the surfaces
see also [
3].
We restrain now to the case where
. Inputting (
28) into (
27) gives us an ODE for the function
:
Substitution of
and the fact that
is positive and increasing reduce it to an easily solvable separable first-order ODE:
A necessary condition for the solvability of the previous ODE is a strict negativity of the discriminant of the quadratic trinomial by
z on the right side, which reduces to
A direct integration of the latter equation yields:
so we obtain, up to a constant:
For the sake of brevity, we may now introduce a strictly positive constant
Replacing
z with
in (
33) provides the following expression for
dependent on
a,
m, and
h:
and since from (
34), we have that
, we straightforwardly obtain from (
23):
Remark 3. Note that in the limit case when B goes to zero, we obtain that , i.e., the surface is a cylinder. Hence, the cylinder and its Bour’s family may be considered as a limit case of Bour’s theorem.
Note that, by allowing h to take negative values, we may take it that .
Previous calculations as well as the following version of the theorem by Lawson and the preceding lemma had the key role in the classification of helicoidal CMC surfaces in the paper [
2].
Theorem 4. (Lawson) Let simply connected CMC surface M be given by immersion , where is a domain. Then, there exists a differentiable periodic family of surfaces , all of which are isometric to M and all with the same mean curvature as M, where . Also, the family in question is unique up to an isometry of Euclidean space .
The proof of the previous claim can be found in [
9], where it is stated in a more general form than required here.
Let
, and
m be defined in terms of new parameters
and
and
, with the condition that
, in the following way:
Then, from the expression for
B, we straightforwardly obtain:
For the particular values
,
, and
, i.e.,
in (
36), we obtain a Delauney’s surface with the constant mean curvature
that belongs to the Bour’s family
, which we shall denote by
.
Lemma 1. Let and be arbitrary and a, h, and m be defined by (36). Then: (a) For every that is, for every Delauney’s surface defined by (23), there exists a one-parameter family of helicoidal surfaces, all with the same mean curvature H, and that family is exactly the Lawson family of the surface . (b) For an arbitrary helicoidal surface M generated by (23), there exists a Delauney surface and a real number such that M is an element of the Lawson family of the surface . Proof. (a) Straightforwardly from (
35) and by using (
37), we get:
so (
38) is valid. By continuous transformation of
in (
36), we obtain a family of helicoidal surfaces with the same constant mean curvature
H, all isometric to
and including
. From the uniqueness of the Lawson family of the surface
, we see that this part of the claim is true. (b) We now start with an arbitrary helicoidal CMC surface with the mean curvature
H. It is an element of some Bour’s family
The goal is to find a Delauney surface
with the mean curvature
H and an isometric deformation such that the helicoidal surface we started with is generated, at some moment
of that deformation. In other words, we want to express
and
in terms of
,
, and
. Coefficients of the second fundamental form of the helicoidal surfaces
are
The metric of the surface
is induced by
, such that
, because all surfaces that appear during isometric deformation must have the same metric. Let
,
and
be the coefficients of the second fundamental form of
. Reparameterization
reduces its first fundamental form (
16) to
so the surface is parameterized by isothermal parameters. From the Lawson theorem, we obtain the family corresponding to
that depends on
and
. Straightforwardly, the coefficients of the second fundamental form of its elements are:
By comparing (
40) and (
39) and since all elements of the family are isometric, i.e.,
, we obtain
Now, let us regard the Delauney’s surface
which is obtained in Lawson’s isometric deformation for
, with
,
, and
. From (
36), we further obtain that:
Now, if we take
and
as
a straightforward computation shows that for
,
,
,
, and
, the relations (
36) are satisfied.
Hence, if we take
,
, and
, we obtain the Lawson’s family of helicoidal
surfaces with the mean curvature
whose starting point is the Delauney’s surface
, where
is defined as (
41), which ends the proof. □
Let
be the value of
B at the moment
:
Then, (
36) and(
37) reduce to:
We noted that in the each Bour’s family , there exists one Delauney’s surface which we may deform isometrically to a helicoidal surface by fixing and varying the pitch h. Previous claims prove that via isometric deformation of the Delauney’s surface through the Lawson’s family, we obtain helicoidal CMC surfaces that share the same mean curvature with the original Delauney’s surface. Moreover, for any mean curvature , a helicoidal CMC surface of that curvature is generated by an isometric deformation of some Delauney’s surface of the same mean curvature.
By taking unduloids, nodoids, and as a boundary case, a cylinder with a fixed mean curvature
, we may regard parameter
as the time, for particular choices of the constant
in (
43), and continuously shift it, which provides us with interesting examples of helicoidal CMC surfaces, all with the same mean curvature
H; see
Figure 5,
Figure 6,
Figure 7 and
Figure 8. The isometric deformation in the case of a sphere would be of no interest, as it stays in the same position, the starting sphere for every moment
.
For further applications of this topic, specifically in the area of computer graphics, it is of interest to fully describe the algorithmic manner in which helicoidal CMC surfaces are generated through the deformation of Delauney’s surfaces (that is, how
Figure 5,
Figure 6,
Figure 7 and
Figure 8 are created and how many similar figures may be created).
We start with a fixed mean curvature
H and (23) and the Delauney surfaces of that mean curvature which we want to deform (with parameter
, i.e.,
via (42)). By continuous movement of parameter
from 0 to
(which continuously changes parameters
m,
B, and
h in formulas (
43)) and substituting those values into (
24), we obtain new helicoidal surfaces, all with the same mean curvature
H. In the images in this paper, we have restricted ourselves to choices
in (23) and to the time intervals for
where the pitch
h is positive, albeit the images in the time interval for
where the pitch
h is negative are basically the same up to an isometry of
.
It would be of interest to see if it is possible to visualize these deformations through real-time animations in some programs, but major problems we encounter here lie in the great time consumption even for creating one surface (frame in the moment of time
), which arises due to the complexity of the integrals from definitions of functions
and
as well as singularities in parameterizations which may occur for certain values of
in certain cases, as described in [
2]. So at the moment, we find that the best way of visualizing these deformations is through the frame-by-frame method, as described here, and we provide Mathematica codes (the link to the codes is here:
https://github.com/Fica991/Visualisation-of-isometric-deformations-of-helicoidal-CMC-surfaces-Mathematica-codes (accessed on 1 July 2024)) for all the figures in this paper.