Rigidity of Nonconvex Polyhedra with Respect to Edge Lengths and Dihedral Angles

Yunhi Cho, Seonhwa Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We prove that every three-dimensional polyhedron is uniquely determined by its dihedral angles and edge lengths, even if nonconvex or self-intersecting, under two plausible sufficient conditions: (i) the polyhedron has only convex faces and (ii) it does not have partially-flat vertices, and under an additional technical requirement that (iii) any triple of vertices is not collinear. The proof is consistently valid for Euclidean, hyperbolic and spherical geometry, which takes a completely different approach from the argument of the Cauchy rigidity theorem. Various counterexamples are provided that arise when these conditions are violated, and self-contained proofs are presented whenever possible. As a corollary, the rigidity of several families of polyhedra is also established. Finally, we propose two conjectures: the first suggests that Condition (iii) can be removed, and the second concerns the rigidity of spherical nonconvex polygons.

Original languageEnglish
JournalDiscrete and Computational Geometry
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2024

Keywords

  • 05C10
  • 52B10
  • 52C25
  • Nonconvex polyhedra
  • Polyhedral combinatorics
  • Rigidity
  • Spherical polygons

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