Abstract

New designs of Aspherics, in the most general sense of the word (including PAL’s), demand higher degrees of freedom in the mathematical formalism that supports the surface definition. The last 20 years have seen the arising of powerful surface design methods that have been succesfully exploited in different areas such as: aeronautics (wings and bodies of planes), naval craft (ship hulls, sails), car body design and so on. These methods, generally known as Sculptured Surface methods have a high number of degrees of freedom, which make them ideal for the design of PAL’s and Aspherics in general.

© 1992 Optical Society of America