Abstract
An ellipse can be uniquely determined by five tangents. Given a convex quadrilateral, there are infinitely many ellipses inscribed in it, but the one with maximum area is unique. In this paper, we give a concise and effective solution of this problem. Our solution is composed of three steps: First, we transform the problem from the maximal ellipse construction problem into the minimal quadrilateral construction problem by an affine transformation. And then, we convert the construction problem into a conditional extremum problem by analyzing the key angles. At last, we derive the solution of the conditional extremum problem with Lagrangian multiplier. Based on the conclusion, we designed an algorithm to achieve the construction. The numerical experiment shows that the ellipse constructed by our algorithm has the maximum area. It is interesting and surprising that our constructions only need to solve quadratic equations, which means the geometric information of the ellipse can even be derived with ruler and compass constructions. The solution of this problem means all the construction problems of conic with extremum area from given pure tangents are solved, which is a necessary step to solve more problems of constructing ellipses with extremum areas. Our work also provides a useful conclusion to solve the maximal inscribed ellipse problem for an arbitrary polygon in Computational Geometry.
Published Version
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