The Kelvin Problem

What space-filling arrangement of cells of equal volume has minimal surface area?

Ruggero Gabbrielli, University of Bath

Foam morphology
Andrew Kraynik (2003)

Polyhedra in a foam
Andrew Kraynik (2003)

A step back: 2D Kelvin problem

Consider partitions of the plane into equal-area regions:
Each pattern has cells of same area Which pattern has the least length per unit cell? Is there a better pattern than C?

The honeycomb conjecture

Thomas Hales (2001): Any partition of the plane into regions of equal area has perimeter at least that of the regular hexagonal honeycomb tiling.

3D Single bubble

What is the shape of a single soap bubble in Euclidean 3-space?

More bubbles

And if we have more than one?

Arial size 20
Arial size 16

Equal volume constraint

If all the bubbles have the same volume (not necessarily the same shape)? Two examples of a foams made of identical bubbles:
Rhombic dodecahedron (Voronoi diagram of FCC) Truncated octahedron (Kelvins partition)

Rhombic dodecahderon
Voronoi diagram of FCC Net name: flu Non-simple polyhedron: not all the vertices are trivalent

Truncated octahedron
Voronoi diagram of BCC Net name: sod Simple polyhedron: each vertex is trivalent

Cost of a foam
The volume of each cell is fixed to be V A is the average interface area per cell A is half the boundary area of a typical cell, since each interface is shared by two cells For example for a cube c=6, for a sphere c=4.84 It turns out that for sod c=5.306 and for flu c=5.345

A V
2 3

The most frequent cell in foams

13 faces: 1 quadrilateral, 10 pentagons and 2 hexagons Ideally, a minimal foam should have an average number of faces of about 13.40 (R. Kusner)

Pentagon content

Kelvin (sod)
Single polyhedron, 14 faces Only hexagons and quadrilaterals

Weaire-Phelan (mep)
Two different polyhedra: 14 and 12 faces Only pentagons and hexagons

Natural foams
A wide range of polyhedra 11% quadrilaterals, 67% pentagons, 22% hexagons (E. Matzke)

sod: Kelvin structure

Periodic unit
One 14-hedron

Polyhedron
8 hexagons and 6 quadrilaterals

cost: 5.306

mep: Weaire-Phelan structure

Periodic unit
Six 14-hedra Two 12-hedra

Polyhedra
12 pentagons and 2 hexagons 12 pentagons

cost: 5.288

Kelvin algorithm
The algorithm used has been developed by Olaf DelgadoFriedrichs It uses an idea introduced by Delaney and successively developed by Dress to store the topological data of a tiling (or the net carrying it) in a file. Simple tilings containing polyhedra with 12 to 16 faces Containing only quadrilaterals, pentagons and hexagons Search is made on vertex-k-transitive tilings The algorithm looks for all the possible ways to tile tetrahedra with given symmetries and constraints

Results
Kelvin algorithm
Simple tilings 4 to 6 sided faces 12 to 16 faced polyhedra Euclidean 3-space

Minimal Foam Structures

http://people.bath.ac.uk/rg247/javaview/start.html http://people.bath.ac.uk/rg247/3d.html (best new result, cost: 5.313)

Energies

Swift-Hohenberg equation

A Matlab code has been used to generate point sets in threespace The Voronoi partition has been created from each of these point sets The surface area has been minimized and calculated Many of the partitions were non-simple. Simple modificatinos of these were produced with the Surface Evolver

Body Centred Cubic (Kelvin)

A15 (Phelan-Weaire)

P42a (the new counter-example)

Thank you!
Olaf Delgado-Friedrichs
The Gavrog Project and the Kelvin algorithm

http://gavrog.sourceforge.net

Ken Brakke
The Surface Evolver

http://www.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/evolver.html

John Sullivan
Vcs (Voronoi generator)

http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/software

David Lloyd
Swift-Hohenberg equation solver

http://personal.maths.surrey.ac.uk/st/D.J.Lloyd