Related papers: On sphere-filling ropes
The ropelength problem asks for the minimum-length configuration of a knotted diameter-one tube embedded in Euclidean three-space. The core curve of such a tube is called a tight knot, and its length is a knot invariant measuring…
What length of rope (of given diameter) is required to tie a particular knot? To answer this question, we define some new notions of thickness for a space curve, one based on Gromov's distortion, and another generalizing the thickness of…
We investigate confined shear thickening suspensions for which the sample thickness is comparable to the particle dimensions. Rheometry measurements are presented for densely packed suspensions of spheres and rods with aspect ratios 6 and…
The classical sphere packing problem asks for the best (infinite) arrangement of non-overlapping unit balls which cover as much space as possible. We define a generalized version of the problem, where we allow each ball a limited amount of…
We study the optimal packing of hard spheres in an infinitely long cylinder, using simulated annealing, and compare our results with the analogous problem of packing disks on the unrolled surface of a cylinder. The densest structures are…
A classical two-stranded rope can be made by twisting two identical strands together under strain. Despite being conceptually simple, the contact-equations for helically twisted identical strands have only been solved within the last 20…
Circle packings are arrangement of circles satisfying specified tangency requirements. Many problems about packing of circles and spheres occur in nature particularly in material design and protein structure. Surprisingly, little is known…
In an Euclidean $d$-space, the container problem asks to pack $n$ equally sized spheres into a minimal dilate of a fixed container. If the container is a smooth convex body and $d\geq 2$ we show that solutions to the container problem can…
It is commonly believed that the most efficient way to pack a finite number of equal-sized spheres is by arranging them tightly in a cluster. However, mathematicians have conjectured that a linear arrangement may actually result in the…
The packing problem of long thin filaments that are injected into confined spaces is of fundamental interest for physicists and biologists alike. How linear threads pack and coil is well known only for the ideal case of rigid containers,…
The ropelength of a knot is the quotient of its length and its thickness, the radius of the largest embedded normal tube around the knot. We prove existence and regularity for ropelength minimizers in any knot or link type; these are…
We give theorems that can be used to upper bound the densities of packings of different spherical caps in the unit sphere and of translates of different convex bodies in Euclidean space. These theorems extend the linear programming bounds…
From understanding the sand on the beach to the foam on your beer, soft sphere simulations have been crucial to the study of the amorphous world around us. However, many of the materials we interact with on a daily basis aren't comprised of…
The most efficient way to pack equally sized spheres isotropically in 3D is known as the random close packed state, which provides a starting point for many approximations in physics and engineering. However, the particle size distribution…
Rigid particles pack into structures, such as sand dunes on the beach, whose overall stability is determined by the average number of contacts between particles. However, when packing spatially extended objects with flexible shapes,…
We develop an analogue for sphere packing of the linear programming bounds for error-correcting codes, and use it to prove upper bounds for the density of sphere packings, which are the best bounds known at least for dimensions 4 through…
We study the set of lines that meet a fixed line and are tangent to two spheres and classify the configurations consisting of a single line and three spheres for which there are infinitely many lines tangent to the three spheres that also…
We consider embeddings of a finite complex in a sphere. We give a homotopy theoretic classification of such embeddings in a wide range.
The problem of a suspended rope wrapped around a fixed cylinder is studied. If the suspension force is larger than a certain threshold (which is larger than the weight of the rope), the rope would remain tightly wrapped around the cylinder.…
It has been known for more than 300 years that the shape of an inelastic hanging cable, chain, or rope of uniform linear mass density is the graph of the hyperbolic cosine, up to scaling and shifting coordinates. But given two points at…