No Arabic abstract
We extend the mathematical theory of rigidity of frameworks (graphs embedded in $d$-dimensional space) to consider nonlocal rigidity and flexibility properties. We provide conditions on a framework under which (I) as the framework flexes continuously it must remain inside a small ball, a property we call almost-rigidity; (II) any other framework with the same edge lengths must lie outside a much larger ball; (III) if the framework deforms by some given amount, its edge lengths change by a minimum amount; (IV) there is a nearby framework that is prestress stable, and thus rigid. The conditions can be tested efficiently using semidefinite programming. The test is a slight extension of the test for prestress stability of a framework, and gives analytic expressions for the radii of the balls and the edge length changes. Examples illustrate how the theory may be applied in practice, and we provide an algorithm to test for rigidity or almost-rigidity. We briefly discuss how the theory may be applied to tensegrities.
Symmetry equations are obtained for the rigidity matrix of a bar-joint framework in R^d. These form the basis for a short proof of the Fowler-Guest symmetry group generalisation of the Calladine-Maxwell counting rules. Similar symmetry equations are obtained for the Jacobian of diverse framework systems, including constrained point-line systems that appear in CAD, body-pin frameworks, hybrid systems of distance constrained objects and infinite bar-joint frameworks. This leads to generalised forms of the Fowler-Guest character formula together with counting rules in terms of counts of symmetry-fixed elements. Necessary conditions for isostaticity are obtained for asymmetric frameworks, both when symmetries are present in subframeworks and when symmetries occur in partition-derived frameworks.
We develop a combinatorial rigidity theory for symmetric bar-joint frameworks in a general finite dimensional normed space. In the case of rotational symmetry, matroidal Maxwell-type sparsity counts are identified for a large class of $d$-dimensional normed spaces (including all $ell^p$ spaces with $p ot=2$). Complete combinatorial characterisations are obtained for half-turn rotation in the $ell^1$ and $ell^infty$-plane. As a key tool, a new Henneberg-type inductive construction is developed for the matroidal class of $(2,2,0)$-gain-tight graphs.
A 2-dimensional point-line framework is a collection of points and lines in the plane which are linked by pairwise constraints that fix some angles between pairs of lines and also some point-line and point-point distances. It is rigid if every continuous motion of the points and lines which preserves the constraints results in a point-line framework which can be obtained from the initial framework by a translation or a rotation. We characterise when a generic point-line framework is rigid. Our characterisation gives rise to a polynomial algorithm for solving this decision problem.
We consider the problem of characterising the generic rigidity of bar-joint frameworks in $mathbb{R}^d$ in which each vertex is constrained to lie in a given affine subspace. The special case when $d=2$ was previously solved by I. Streinu and L. Theran in 2010. We will extend their characterisation to the case when $dgeq 3$ and each vertex is constrained to lie in an affine subspace of dimension $t$, when $t=1,2$ and also when $tgeq 3$ and $dgeq t(t-1)$. We then point out that results on body-bar frameworks obtained by N. Katoh and S. Tanigawa in 2013 can be used to characterise when a graph has a rigid realisation as a $d$-dimensional body-bar framework with a given set of linear constraints.
Fekete, Jordan and Kaszanitzky [4] characterised the graphs which can be realised as 2-dimensional, infinitesimally rigid, bar-joint frameworks in which two given vertices are coincident. We formulate a conjecture which would extend their characterisation to an arbitrary set T of vertices and verify our conjecture when |T| = 3.