Related papers: Locked and Unlocked Chains of Planar Shapes
Soss proved that it is NP-hard to find the maximum 2D span of a fixed-angle polygonal chain: the largest distance achievable between the endpoints in a planar embedding. These fixed-angle chains can serve as models of protein backbones. The…
Tight triangulations are exotic, but highly regular objects in combinatorial topology. A triangulation is tight if all its piecewise linear embeddings into a Euclidean space are as convex as allowed by the topology of the underlying…
A foundational result in origami mathematics is Kawasaki and Justin's simple, efficient characterization of flat foldability for unassigned single-vertex crease patterns (where each crease can fold mountain or valley) on flat material. This…
We give a counterexample to a conjecture of Poon [Poo06] that any orthogonal tree in two dimensions can always be flattened by a continuous motion that preserves edge lengths and avoids self-intersection. We show our example is locked by…
We characterize and classify completely the planar 4R closed chain working on the Minkowskian plane. Our work would open a new research direction in the theory of geometric designs: the classification and characterization of the geometric…
We prove the existence of families of distinct isotopy classes of physical unknots through the key concept of parametrised thickness. These unknots have prescribed length, tube thickness, a uniform bound on curvature, and cannot be…
A kinematic chain in three-dimensional Euclidean space consists of $n$ links that are connected by spherical joints. Such a chain is said to be within a closed configuration when its link lengths form a closed polygonal chain in three…
We show that 4-connected plane triangulations can be redrawn such that edges are represented by straight segments and the vertices are covered by a set of at most $\sqrt{2n}$ lines each of them horizontal or vertical. The same holds for all…
We prove two results about transforming any convex polyhedron, modeled as a linkage L of its edges. First, if we subdivide each edge of L in half, then L can be continuously flattened into a plane. Second, if L is equilateral and we again…
An exactly solvable family of models describing the wrinkling of substrate-supported inextensible elastic rings under compression is identified. The resulting wrinkle profiles are shown to be related to the buckled states of an unsupported…
An unfolding of a polyhedron along its edges is called a vertex unfolding if adjacent faces are allowed to be connected at not only an edge but also a vertex. Demaine et al showed that every triangulated polyhedron has a vertex unfolding.…
We introduce the abstract notion of a chain, which is a sequence of $n$ points in the plane, ordered by $x$-coordinates, so that the edge between any two consecutive points is unavoidable as far as triangulations are concerned. A general…
Unfolding a convex polyhedron into a simple planar polygon is a well-studied problem. In this paper, we study the limits of unfoldability by studying nonconvex polyhedra with the same combinatorial structure as convex polyhedra. In…
Tightness of a triangulated manifold is a topological condition, roughly meaning that any simplexwise linear embedding of the triangulation into euclidean space is "as convex as possible". It can thus be understood as a generalization of…
We consider arrangements of axis-aligned rectangles in the plane. A geometric arrangement specifies the coordinates of all rectangles, while a combinatorial arrangement specifies only the respective intersection type in which each pair of…
A linkage is a finite graph with lengths assigned to each edge. A planar realization is a map to the plane which preserves edge lengths. It can be thought of as a mechanical device formed from stiff rods and rotating joints. We look at the…
Origami structures are characterized by a network of folds and vertices joining unbendable plates. For applications to mechanical design and self-folding structures, it is essential to understand the interplay between the set of folds in…
We revisit the classical problem of a polymer confined in a slit in both of its static and dynamic aspects. We confirm a number of well known scaling predictions and analyse their range of validity by means of comprehensive Molecular…
Complex textured surfaces occur in nature and industry, from fingerprints to lithography-based micropatterns. Wrinkling by confinement to an incompatible substrate is an attractive way of generating reconfigurable patterned topographies,…
We consider the problem of deciding whether a polygonal knot in 3-dimensional Euclidean space is unknotted, capable of being continuously deformed without self-intersection so that it lies in a plane. We show that this problem, {\sc…