Deformations of Period Lattices of Flexible Polyhedral Surfaces

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century Bricard discovered the phenomenon of flexible polyhedra, that is, polyhedra with rigid faces and hinges at edges that admit non-trivial flexes. One of the most important results in this field is a theorem of Sabitov, asserting that the volume of a flexible polyhedron is constant during the flexion. In this paper we study flexible polyhedral surfaces in ℝ3, doubly periodic with respect to translations by two non-collinear vectors, that can vary continuously during the flexion. The main result is that the period lattice of a flexible doubly periodic surface that is homeomorphic to the plane cannot have two degrees of freedom. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York.