The strong chromatic index of a multigraph is the minimum k such that the edge set can be k-colored requiring that each color class induces a matching. We verify a conjecture of Faudree, Gyarfas, Schelp and Tuza, showing that every planar multigraph with maximum degree at most 3 has strong chromatic index at most 9, which is sharp. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
