Given a polyhedral surface, assume that it is prohibited to change the shape and size of any face but it is permissible to change the dihedral angles between the faces. A polyhedral surface is said to be flexible if it is possible to change its shape under the above restrictions. We prove that flexible polyhedral surfaces without boundary do exist in the Minkowski 3-space and each of them preserves the (inclosed) volume and the (total) mean curvature during a flex. To prove the latter result, we introduce the notion of the angle between two arbitrary non-null nonzero vectors in the Minkowski plane. The latter notion may be of some independent interest.
Classical H.Minkowski theorems on existence and uniqueness of convex polyhedra with prescribed directions and areas of faces as well as the well-known generalization of H.Minkowski uniqueness theorem due to A.D.Alexandrov are extended to a class of nonconvex polyhedra which are called polyhedral herissons and may be described as polyhedra with injective spherical image.
We construct some example of a closed nondegenerate nonflexible polyhedron $P$ in Euclidean 3-space that is the limit of a sequence of nondegenerate flexible polyhedra each of which is combinatorially equivalent to $P$. This implies that the set of flexible nondegenerate polyhedra combinatorially equivalent to $P$ is not algebraic.
We demonstrate the existence of four types of flexible prismatic polyhedra that can be derived or inferred from a consideration of Bricard octahedra and generalizations of Bricard octahedra. These flexible polyhedra are of genus 0 and 1, have dihedral angles all of which are non-constant under flexion, have faces that exhibit self-intersections, have an indefinite number of faces and have vertex motion that can treated as a function of a single variable.
In the previous version of the paper it was announced that ``sphere homeomorphic flexible polyhedra (with self intersections) do really exist in n-dimensional Euclidean, Lobachevskij and spherical spaces for each $n\geq 3$.'' Now the paper has been withdrawn by the author, due a crucial error in the proof of the main theorem.
We discuss some recent results on flexible polyhedra and the bellows conjecture, which claims that the volume of any flexible polyhedron is constant during the flexion. Also, we survey main methods and several open problems in this area.
Polyhedra called Siamese dipyramids are known to be non-flexible, however their physical models behave like physical models of flexible polyhedra. We discuss a simple mathematical method for explaining the model flexibility of the Siamese dipyramids.
In the end of the 19th century Bricard discovered a phenomenon of flexible polyhedra, that is, polyhedra with rigid faces and hinges at edges that admit non-trivial flexes. One of the most important results in this field is a theorem of Sabitov asserting that the volume of a flexible polyhedron is constant during the flexion. In this paper we study flexible polyhedral surfaces in the 3-space two-periodic with respect to translations by two non-colinear vectors that can vary continuously during the flexion. The main result is that the period lattice of a flexible two-periodic surface homeomorph…
Finding necessary conditions for the geometry of flexible polyhedra is a classical problem that has received attention also in recent times. For flexible polyhedra with triangular faces, we showed in a previous work the existence of cycles with a sign assignment for their edges, such that the signed sum of the edge lengths along the cycle is zero. In this work, we extend this result to flexible non-triangular polyhedra.
Two basic theorems of the theory of flexible polyhedra were proven by completely different methods: R. Alexander used analysis, namely, the Stokes theorem, to prove that the total mean curvature remains constant during the flex, while I.Kh. Sabitov used algebra, namely, the theory of resultants, to prove that the oriented volume remains constant during the flex. We show that none of these methods can be used to prove the both theorems. As a by-product, we prove that the total mean curvature of any polyhedron in the Euclidean 3-space is not an algebraic function of its edge lengths.
A Kokotsakis polyhedron with quadrangular base is a neighborhood of a quadrilateral in a quad surface. Generically, a Kokotsakis polyhedron is rigid. Up to now, several flexible classes were known, but a complete classification was missing. In the present paper, we provide such a classification. The analysis is based on the fact that the dihedral angles of a Kokotsakis polyhedron are related by an Euler-Chasles correspondence. It results in a diagram of elliptic curves covering complex projective planes. A polyhedron is flexible if and only if this diagram commutes.
We demonstrate the construction of several families of flexible polyhedra by extending Bricard octahedra to form larger composite flexible polyhedra. These flexible polyhedra are of genus 0 and 1, have dihedral angles that are non-constant under flexion, exhibit self-intersections and are of indefinite size, the smallest of which is a decahedron with seven vertexes.
We study the existence problem for a local implicit function determined by a system of nonlinear algebraic equations in the particular case when the determinant of its Jacobian matrix vanishes at the point under consideration. We present a system of sufficient conditions that implies existence of a local implicit function as well as another system of sufficient conditions that guarantees absence of a local implicit function. The results obtained are applied to proving new and classical results on flexibility and rigidity of polyhedra and frameworks.
We show that if a polyhedron in the three-dimensional affine space with triangular faces is flexible, i.e., can be continuously deformed preserving the shape of its faces, then there is a cycle of edges whose lengths sum up to zero once suitably weighted by 1 and -1. We do this via elementary combinatorial considerations, made possible by a well-known compactification of the three-dimensional affine space as a quadric in the four-dimensional projective space. The compactification is related to the Euclidean metric, and allows us to use a simple degeneration technique that reduces the problem t…
We extend the results of B. Minemyer by showing that any indefinite metric polyhedron (either compact or not) with the vertex degree bounded from above admits an isometric simplicial embedding into a Minkowski space of the lowest possible dimension. We provide a simple algorithm of constructing such embeddings. We also show that every partial simplicial isometric embedding of such space in general position extends to a simplicial isometric embedding of the whole space.
We study a class of polyhedra associated to marked posets. Examples of these polyhedra are Gelfand-Tsetlin polytopes and cones, as well as Berenstein-Zelevinsky polytopes, all of which have appeared in the representation theory of semi-simple Lie algebras. The faces of these polyhedra correspond to certain partitions of the underlying poset and we give a combinatorial characterization of these partitions. We specify a class of marked posets that give rise to polyhedra with facets in correspondence to the covering relations of the poset. On the convex geometrical side, we describe the recession…
The action of the rotation group $SO(3)$ on systems of $n$ points in the $3$-dimensional Euclidean space $\mathbf{R}^3$ induces naturally an action of $SO(3)$ on $\mathbf{R}^{3n}$. In the present paper we consider the following question: do there exist $3$ polynomial functions $f_1$, $f_2$, $f_3$ on $\mathbf{R}^{3n}$ such that the intersection of the set of common zeros of $f_1$, $f_2$, and $f_3$ with each orbit of $SO(3)$ in $R^{3n}$ is nonempty and finite? Questions of this kind arise when one is interested in relative motions of a given set of $n$ points, i.e., when one wants to exclude the…
We study oriented connected closed polyhedral surfaces with non-degenerate triangular faces in three-dimensional Euclidean space, calling them polyhedra for short. A polyhedron is called flexible if its spatial shape can be changed continuously by changing its dihedral angles only. We prove that the polyhedron is not flexible if for each of its edges the following holds true: the length of this edge is not a linear combination with rational coefficients of the lengths of the remaining edges. We prove also that if a polyhedron is flexible, then some linear combinations of its dihedral angles re…
A mechanical linkage is a mechanism made of rigid rods linked together by flexible joints, in which some vertices are fixed and others may move. The partial configuration space of a linkage is the set of all the possible positions of a subset of the vertices. We characterize the possible partial configuration spaces of linkages in the Minkowski plane. We also give a proof of a differential universality theorem in the Minkowski plane: for any manifold M which is the interior of a compact manifold with boundary, there is a linkage which has a configuration space diffeomorphic to the disjoint uni…
In 1996 I.Kh. Sabitov proved that the volume of a simplicial polyhedron in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space is a root of certain polynomial with coefficients depending on the combinatorial type and on edge lengths of the polyhedron only. Moreover, the coefficients of this polynomial are polynomials in edge lengths of the polyhedron. This result implies that the volume of a simplicial polyhedron with fixed combinatorial type and edge lengths can take only finitely many values. In particular, this yields that the volume of a flexible polyhedron in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space is constant. Unti…
A mechanical linkage is a mechanism made of rigid rods linked together by flexible joints, in which some vertices are fixed and others may move. The partial configuration space of a linkage is the set of all the possible positions of a subset of the vertices. We characterize the possible partial configuration spaces of linkages in the (Lorentz-)Minkowski plane, in the hyperbolic plane and in the sphere. We also give a proof of a differential universality theorem in the Minkowski plane and in the hyperbolic plane: for any compact manifold M, there is a linkage whose configuration space is diffe…
