TY - JOUR
T1 - Rigidity of Nonconvex Polyhedra with Respect to Edge Lengths and Dihedral Angles
AU - Cho, Yunhi
AU - Kim, Seonhwa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.
PY - 2025/9
Y1 - 2025/9
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Nonconvex polyhedra
KW - Polyhedral combinatorics
KW - Rigidity
KW - Spherical polygons
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85208795469
U2 - 10.1007/s00454-024-00670-w
DO - 10.1007/s00454-024-00670-w
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85208795469
SN - 0179-5376
VL - 74
SP - 302
EP - 336
JO - Discrete and Computational Geometry
JF - Discrete and Computational Geometry
IS - 2
ER -