WIAS Preprint No. 2602, (2019)

On decomposition of embedded prismatoids in $R^3$ without additional points



Authors

  • Si, Hang

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification

  • 65D18 68U05 65M50 65N50

Keywords

  • Twisted prisms, twisted prismatoids, torus knots, indecomposable polyhedra, Steiner points, Schönhardt polyhedron, Rambau polyhedron

DOI

10.20347/WIAS.PREPRINT.2602

Abstract

This paper considers three-dimensional prismatoids which can be embedded in ℝ³ A subclass of this family are twisted prisms, which includes the family of non-triangulable Scönhardt polyhedra [12, 10]. We call a prismatoid decomposable if it can be cut into two smaller prismatoids (which have smaller volumes) without using additional points. Otherwise it is indecomposable. The indecomposable property implies the non-triangulable property of a prismatoid but not vice versa.
In this paper we prove two basic facts about the decomposability of embedded prismatoid in ℝ³ with convex bases. Let P be such a prismatoid, call an edge interior edge of P if its both endpoints are vertices of P and its interior lies inside P. Our first result is a condition to characterise indecomposable twisted prisms. It states that a twisted prism is indecomposable without additional points if and only if it allows no interior edge. Our second result shows that any embedded prismatoid in ℝ³ with convex base polygons can be decomposed into the union of two sets (one of them may be empty): a set of tetrahedra and a set of indecomposable twisted prisms, such that all elements in these two sets have disjoint interiors.

Appeared in

  • V.A. Garanzha, L. Kamenski, H. Si (eds.), Numerical Geometry, Grid Generation and Scientific Computing, vol. 143 of Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci. and Engrg., Springer, Cham, 2021, pp. 95--111.

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