Greiner, Gunther2014-10-212014-10-2119941467-8659https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8659.1330143Variational principles have become quite popular in the design of free form surfaces. Among others they are used for fairing purposes. The choice of the right fairness functional is a crucial step. There is always a tradeoff between high quality and computational effort. In this paper we present fairness functionals that allow fairing efficiently, i.e., produce high quality surfaces in a reasonable amount of time. These functionals can be considered as simplified thin plate energy functionals for parametric surfaces or as simplified MVC functionals.10.1111/1467-8659.1330143143-154