Properties of triangulations obtained by the longest-edge bisection

Abstract

The Longest-Edge (LE) bisection of a triangle is obtained by joining the midpoint of its longest edge with the opposite vertex. Here two properties of the longest-edge bisection scheme for triangles are proved. For any triangle, the number of distinct triangles (up to similarity) generated by longest-edge bisection is finite. In addition, if LE-bisection is iteratively applied to an initial triangle, then minimum angle of the resulting triangles is greater or equal than a half of the minimum angle of the initial angle. The novelty of the proofs is the use of an hyperbolic metric in a shape space for triangles.