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Deborah S. Franzblau - Generic rigidity of molecular graphs



DEBORAH S. FRANZBLAU, Department of Mathematics, CUNY/College of Staten Island, Staten Island, New York  10314, USA
Generic rigidity of molecular graphs


A hard open problem is to find a purely combinatorial algorithm to determine whether a graph, representing a structure made of rigid bars and flexible joints, is generically rigid in 3 dimensions. A molecular graph or square of a graph, in which an edge is added between each pair of neigboring edges, models an atom-bond network with constraints on bond angles as well as bond lengths, which is a special case important in materials science, especially for the study of glasses. In this talk I will discuss the computation of generic degrees of freedom, the standard measure of rigidity, of molecular graphs.