Representations of Dupin Cyclides

We know very little about such an interesting surface as Dupin cyclide. It belongs to channel surfaces, its special cases are tor, conical and cylindrical surfaces of rotation. It is known that Dupin cyclides are the only surfaces whose focal surfaces, that are surfaces consisting of sets of curvatures centers points, have been degenerated in second-order curves. Two sets give two confocal conics. That is why any study of Dupin cyclides is of great interest both scientific and applied. In the works devoted to Dupin cyclide and published in the "Geometry and Graphics" journal, are presented various properties of cyclides, and demonstrated application of these surfaces in various industries, mostly in construction. Based on the cyclides’ properties in 1980s have been developed numerous inventions relating to devices for drawing and having the opportunity to be applied in various geometric constructions with the use of computer technologies. In the present paper have been considered various options for representation of Dupin cyclides on a different basis – from the traditional way using the three given spheres unto the second-order curves. In such a case, if it is possible to represent four cyclides by three spheres, and when cyclide is represented by the second-order curve (konic) and the sphere their number is reduced to two, then in representation of cyclide by the conic and one of two cyclide’s axes a single Dupin cyclide is obtained. The conic itself without any additional parameters represents the single-parameter set of cyclides. Representations of Dupin cyclides by ellipse, hyperbola and parabola have been considered. The work has been sufficiently illustrated.

Minkowski plane, confocal conics, and billiards

Geometry of confocal conics in the Minkowski plane and related billiard dynamics are studied in details. Periodic trajectories are described and several new examples are presented. Topological properties of the elliptical billiards are analyzed and the results are formulated in the terms of the Fomenko graphs.