Convex Polygons in Geometric Triangulations

We show that the maximum number of convex polygons in a triangulation ofnpoints in the plane isO(1.5029n). This improves an earlier bound ofO(1.6181n) established by van Kreveld, Löffler and Pach (2012), and almost matches the current best lower bound of Ω(1.5028n) due to the same authors. Given a planar straight-line graphGwithnvertices, we also show how to compute efficiently the number of convex polygons inG.

WHEN AND WHY DELAUNAY REFINEMENT ALGORITHMS WORK

An "adaptive" variant of Ruppert's Algorithm for producing quality triangular planar meshes is introduced. The algorithm terminates for arbitrary Planar Straight Line Graph (PSLG) input. The algorithm outputs a Delaunay mesh where no triangle has minimum angle smaller than about 26.45° except "across" from small angles of the input. No angle of the output mesh is smaller than arctan [(sin θ*)/(2-cos θ*)] where θ* is the minimum input angle. Moreover no angle of the mesh is larger than about 137°, independent of small input angles. The adaptive variant is unnecessary when θ* is larger than 36.53°, and thus Ruppert's Algorithm (with concentric shell splitting) can accept input with minimum angle as small as 36.53°. An argument is made for why Ruppert's Algorithm can terminate when the minimum output angle is as large as 30°.

A POINT-PLACEMENT STRATEGY FOR CONFORMING DELAUNAY TETRAHEDRALIZATION

A strategy is presented to find a set of points that yields a Conforming Delaunay tetrahedralization of a three-dimensional Piecewise-Linear complex (PLC). This algorithm is novel because it imposes no angle restrictions on the input PLC. In the process, an algorithm is described that computes a planar conforming Delaunay triangulation of a Planar Straight-Line Graph (PSLG) such that each triangle has a bounded circumradius, which may be of independent interest.

Finding a Covering Triangulation Whose Maximum Angle is Provably Small

We consider the following problem: given a planar straight-line graph, find a covering triangulation whose maximum angle is as small as possible. A covering triangulation is a triangulation whose vertex set contains the input vertex set and whose edge set contains the input edge set. The covering triangulation problem differs from the usual Steiner triangulation problem in that we may not add a vertex on any input edge. Covering triangulations provide a convenient method for triangulating multiple regions sharing a common boundary, as each region can be triangulated independently. We give an explicit lower bound γopt on the maximum angle in any covering triangulation of a particular input graph in terms of its local geometry. Our algorithm produces a covering triangulation whose maximum angle γ is provably close to γopt. Specifically, we show that [Formula: see text], i.e., our γ is not much closer to π than is γopt. To our knowledge, this result represents the first nontrivial bound on a covering triangulation's maximum angle. Our algorithm adds O(n) Steiner points and runs in time O(n log n), where n is the number of vertices of the input. We have implemented an O(n2) time version of our algorithm.