Edge-Unfolding Nearly Flat Convex Caps

The main result of this paper is a proof that a nearly flat, acutely triangulated convex cap C in ℝ3 has an edge-unfolding to a non-overlapping polygon in the plane. A convex cap is the intersection of the surface of a convex polyhedron and a halfspace. Nearly flat means that every outer face normal forms a sufficiently small angle φ \u3c Φ with the z-axis orthogonal to the halfspace bounding plane. The size of Φ depends on the acuteness gap α: if every triangle angle is at most π/2 - α, then Φ ≈ 0.36√α suffices; e.g., for α = 3°, Φ ≈ 5°. The proof employs the recent concepts of angle-monotone and radially monotone curves. The proof is constructive, leading to a polynomial-time algorithm for finding the edge-cuts, at worst O(n); a version has been implemented

Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Radially Monotone Cut Trees

A notion of "radially monotone" cut paths is introduced as an effective choice for finding a non-overlapping edge-unfolding of a convex polyhedron. These paths have the property that the two sides of the cut avoid overlap locally as the cut is infinitesimally opened by the curvature at the vertices along the path. It is shown that a class of planar, triangulated convex domains always have a radially monotone spanning forest, a forest that can be found by an essentially greedy algorithm. This algorithm can be mimicked in 3D and applied to polyhedra inscribed in a sphere. Although the algorithm does not provably find a radially monotone cut tree, it in fact does find such a tree with high frequency, and after cutting unfolds without overlap. This performance of a greedy algorithm leads to the conjecture that spherical polyhedra always have a radially monotone cut tree and unfold without overlap.Comment: 41 pages, 39 figures. V2 updated to cite in an addendum work on "self-approaching curves.

Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Radially Monotone Cut Trees

A notion of radially monotone cut paths is introduced as an effective choice for finding a non-overlapping edge-unfolding of a convex polyhedron. These paths have the property that the two sides of the cut avoid overlap locally as the cut is infinitesimally opened by the curvature at the vertices along the path. It is shown that a class of planar, triangulated convex domains always have a radially monotone spanning forest, a forest that can be found by an essentially greedy algorithm. This algorithm can be mimicked in 3D and applied to polyhedra inscribed in a sphere. Although the algorithm does not provably find a radially monotone cut tree, it in fact does find such a tree with high frequency, and after cutting unfolds without overlap. This performance of a greedy algorithm leads to the conjecture that spherical polyhedra always have a radially monotone cut tree and unfold without overlap