Drawing Planar Graphs with Few Geometric Primitives

We define the \emph{visual complexity} of a plane graph drawing to be the number of basic geometric objects needed to represent all its edges. In particular, one object may represent multiple edges (e.g., one needs only one line segment to draw a path with an arbitrary number of edges). Let $n$ denote the number of vertices of a graph. We show that trees can be drawn with $3n/4$ straight-line segments on a polynomial grid, and with $n/2$ straight-line segments on a quasi-polynomial grid. Further, we present an algorithm for drawing planar 3-trees with $(8n-17)/3$ segments on an $O(n)\times O(n^2)$ grid. This algorithm can also be used with a small modification to draw maximal outerplanar graphs with $3n/2$ edges on an $O(n)\times O(n^2)$ grid. We also study the problem of drawing maximal planar graphs with circular arcs and provide an algorithm to draw such graphs using only $(5n - 11)/3$ arcs. This is significantly smaller than the lower bound of $2n$ for line segments for a nontrivial graph class.Comment: Appeared at Proc. 43rd International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG 2017

Outerplanar graph drawings with few slopes

We consider straight-line outerplanar drawings of outerplanar graphs in which a small number of distinct edge slopes are used, that is, the segments representing edges are parallel to a small number of directions. We prove that $\Delta-1$ edge slopes suffice for every outerplanar graph with maximum degree $\Delta\ge 4$. This improves on the previous bound of $O(\Delta^5)$, which was shown for planar partial 3-trees, a superclass of outerplanar graphs. The bound is tight: for every $\Delta\ge 4$ there is an outerplanar graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ that requires at least $\Delta-1$ distinct edge slopes in an outerplanar straight-line drawing.Comment: Major revision of the whole pape

Effect of surface topography upon the quality of autobody panels

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Improvements in the quality of the autobody panels can lead the automotive industry to large savings, where metal scrap levels always exceed 50%, and global losses are running into millions of pounds per annum. The production of new tooling also runs into the order of millions of pounds, often taking many weeks of trials to achieve the correct profiles and clearances. It is therefore important to identify the correct material to use in term of substrate mechanical properties and surface topography and coating type) in order to achieve better quality and minimise manufacturing costs. The most useful approach to surface topography characterisation in engineering is to describe a surface by a set of parameters, which can be measured objectively, correlated to functional behaviour and used for process control. The research work presented in this thesis consisted in the study of the different stages of the autobody manufacturing process through an extensive experimental activity. The phenomenon of oil retention of a surface and friction were studied and novel 3D surface topography parameters were deployed. Then, the experimental results were correlated with the surface topography parameters in order to understand how surface topography is influencing these phenomena. Finally, a similar approach was attempted with semi-industrial experimentation to probe for correlation between surface topography parameters and ability of a material to be deep drawn

A Universal Slope Set for 1-Bend Planar Drawings

We describe a set of Delta-1 slopes that are universal for 1-bend planar drawings of planar graphs of maximum degree Delta>=4; this establishes a new upper bound of Delta-1 on the 1-bend planar slope number. By universal we mean that every planar graph of degree Delta has a planar drawing with at most one bend per edge and such that the slopes of the segments forming the edges belong to the given set of slopes. This improves over previous results in two ways: Firstly, the best previously known upper bound for the 1-bend planar slope number was 3/2(Delta-1) (the known lower bound being 3/4(Delta-1)); secondly, all the known algorithms to construct 1-bend planar drawings with O(Delta) slopes use a different set of slopes for each graph and can have bad angular resolution, while our algorithm uses a universal set of slopes, which also guarantees that the minimum angle between any two edges incident to a vertex is pi/(Delta-1)

Embedding Vertices at Points: Few Bends Suffice for Planar Graphs

The existing literature gives efficient algorithms for mapping trees or less restrictively outerplanar graphs on a given set of points in a plane, so that the edges are drawn planar and as straight lines. We relax the latter requirement and allow very few bends on each edge while considering general plane graphs. Our results show two algorithms for mapping four-connected plane graphs with at most one bend per edge and for mapping general plane graphs with at most two bends per edge. Furthermore we give a point set, where for arbitrary plane graphs it is NP-complete to decide whether there is an mapping such that each edge has at most one bend