Osculating circle

Osculating circle
An osculating circle is a circle that best approximates the curvature of a curve at a specific point. It is tangent to the curve at that point and has the same curvature as the curve at that point. The osculating circle provides a way to understand the local behavior of a curve and is commonly used in differential geometry and calculus.
More formally, in differential geometry of curves, the osculating circle of a sufficiently smooth plane curve at a given point p on the curve has been traditionally defined as the circle passing through p and a pair of additional points on the curve infinitesimally close to p. Its center lies on the inner normal line, and its curvature defines the curvature of the given curve at that point. This circle, which is the one among all tangent circles at the given point that approaches the curve most tightly, was named circulus osculans (Latin for "kissing circle") by Leibniz.
The center and radius of the osculating circle at a given point are called center of curvature and radius of curvature of the curve at that point. A geometric construction was described by Isaac Newton in his Principia:
Nontechnical description
Imagine a car moving along a curved road on a vast flat plane. Suddenly, at one point along the road, the steering wheel locks in its present position. Thereafter, the car moves in a circle that "kisses" the road at the point of locking. The curvature of the circle is equal to that of the road at that point. That circle is the osculating circle of the road curve at that point.
Mathematical description
Let be a regular parametric plane curve, where is the arc length (the natural parameter). This determines the unit tangent vector , the unit normal vector , the signed curvature and the radius of curvature at each point for which is composed:
Suppose that P is a point on γ where . The corresponding center of curvature is the point Q at distance R along N, in the same direction if k is positive and in the opposite direction if k is negative. The circle with center at Q and with radius R is called the osculating circle to the curve γ at the point P.
If C is a regular space curve then the osculating circle is defined in a similar way, using the principal normal vector N. It lies in the osculating plane, the plane spanned by the tangent and principal normal vectors T and N at the point P.
The plane curve can also be given in a different regular parametrization
where regular means that for all . Then the formulas for the signed curvature k(t), the normal unit vector N(t), the radius of curvature R(t), and the center Q(t) of the osculating circle are
Cartesian coordinates
We can obtain the center of the osculating circle in Cartesian coordinates if we substitute and for some function f. If we do the calculations the results for the X and Y coordinates of the center of the osculating circle are:
Direct geometrical derivation
Consider three points , and , where . To find the center of the circle that passes through these points, we have first to find the segment bisectors of and and then the point where these lines cross. Therefore, the coordinates of are obtained through solving a linear system of two equations:
where , for .
Consider now the curve and set , and . To the second order in , we have
and a similar expression for and where the sign of is reversed. Developing the equation for and grouping the terms in and , we obtain
Denoting , the first equation means that is orthogonal to the unit tangent vector at :
The second relation means that
where
is the curvature vector. In plane geometry, is orthogonal to because
Therefore and the radius of the osculating circle is precisely the inverse of the curvature.
Solving the equation for the coordinates of , we find
Osculating circle as a minimization problem
Consider a curve defined intrinsically by the equation
which we can envision as the section of the surface by the plane .
The normal to the curve at a point is the gradient at this point
Therefore, the centers of the tangent circles are given by
where is parameter. For a given the radius of is We wish to find, among all possible circles , the one that matches best the curve.
The coordinates of a point can be written as
where for i.e.
Consider now a point close to , where its "angle" is . Developing the trigonometric functions to the second order in and using the above relations, coordinates of are
We can now evaluate the function at the point and its variation .
The variation is zero to the first order in by construction (to the first order in , is on the tangent line to the curve ). The variation proportional to is
and this variation is zero if we choose
Therefore the radius of the osculating circle is
For an explicit function , we find the results of the preceding section.
Properties
For a curve C given by a sufficiently smooth parametric equations (twice continuously differentiable), the osculating circle may be obtained by a limiting procedure: it is the limit of the circles passing through three distinct points on C as these points approach P. This is entirely analogous to the construction of the tangent to a curve as a limit of the secant lines through pairs of distinct points on C approaching P.
The osculating circle S to a plane curve C at a regular point P can be characterized by the following properties:
The circle S passes through P.
The circle S and the curve C have the common tangent line at P, and therefore the common normal line.
Close to P, the distance between the points of the curve C and the circle S in the normal direction decays as the cube or a higher power of the distance to P in the tangential direction.
This is usually expressed as "the curve and its osculating circle have the second or higher order contact" at P. Loosely speaking, the vector functions representing C and S agree together with their first and second derivatives at P.
If the derivative of the curvature with respect to s is nonzero at P then the osculating circle crosses the curve C at P. Points P at which the derivative of the curvature is zero are called vertices. If P is a vertex then C and its osculating circle have contact of order at least three. If, moreover, the curvature has a non-zero local maximum or minimum at P then the osculating circle touches the curve C at P but does not cross it.
The curve C may be obtained as the envelope of the one-parameter family of its osculating circles. Their centers, i.e. the centers of curvature, form another curve, called the evolute of C. Vertices of C correspond to singular points on its evolute.
Within any arc of a curve C within which the curvature is monotonic (that is, away from any vertex of the curve), the osculating circles are all disjoint and nested within each other. This result is known as the Tait-Kneser theorem.
Examples
Parabola
For the parabola
the radius of curvature is
At the vertex the radius of curvature equals (see figure). The parabola has fourth order contact with its osculating circle there. For large the radius of curvature increases ~ , that is, the curve straightens more and more.
Lissajous curve
A Lissajous curve with ratio of frequencies (3:2) can be parametrized as follows
It has signed curvature , normal unit vector and radius of curvature given by
and
See the figure for an animation. There the "acceleration vector" is the second derivative with respect to the arc length .
Cycloid
A cycloid with radius can be parametrized as follows:
Its curvature is given by the following formula:
which gives:
See also
Circle packing theorem
Osculating curve
Osculating sphere
Notes
Further reading
For some historical notes on the study of curvature, see
For application to maneuvering vehicles see
JC Alexander and JH Maddocks (1988): On the maneuvering of vehicles
External links
math3d : osculating_circle
Circles
Differential geometry
Curves