Projections Of Polyhedra Research Articles

Pictures as Boolean Formulas

Both labellability and realizability problems of planar projections of polyhedra (i.e., pictures) are known to be NP-complete problems. This is true, even in the case of trihedral polyhedra, where exactly three faces meet at every vertex. In this paper, we examine pictures that are taken to be projections of trihedral polyhedra without holes, and contain the projections of all edges (hidden and visible) of a polyhedron. In other words, we examine pictures which represent the entire shape of a trihedral polyhedron without holes. Such a picture is a connected graph P=(V,E) with |E| edges and |V| nodes, each of degree 3 ( $|E| = \frac{3|V|}{2}$ ). We propose a mathematical scheme that constructs from the picture a Boolean formula ? P , which is a conjunction of clauses, each consisting of at most two literals. Based on the satisfiability of ? P , we show that both labellability and realizability problems can be solved efficiently in polynomial time. The category of pictures with hidden lines consists of the first category of pictures, where the labellability problem is solved in polynomial time, and, moreover, its solution implies the solution of the realizability problem in polynomial time too. Our approach may also prove useful in other applications of scene analysis.

Approximation of convex functions by projections of polyhedra

A method for approximate solution of minimization problems for multivariable convex functions with convex constraints is proposed. The main idea consists in approximation of the objective function and constraints by piecewise linear functions and subsequent reduction of the initial convex programming problem to a problem of linear programming. We present algorithms constructing approximating polygons for some classes of single variable convex functions. The many-dimensional problem is reduced to a one-dimensional one by an inductive procedure. The efficiency of the method is illustrated by numerical examples.

On the enumeration of phase diagrams

The topological isomorphism of polyhedra with trivalent vertices and solid-liquid diagrams of three-component systems allows the problem of constructing the complete set of the topological types of diagrams with a given set of characteristics to be reduced to the problem of the generation of marked cubic graphs, which are the Schlegel projections of polyhedra. The problem of the enumeration of possible topological types of melting diagrams containing M binary and N ternary stoichiometric congruently melting compounds is considered. Relations between the topological characteristics of such diagrams are given. The total number of topologically different types of melting diagrams with one binary and one ternary congruently melting compounds was found to be 64.