New Approaches to Circle Packing in a Square

In one sense, the problem of finding the densest packing of congruent circles in a square is easy to understand. But on closer inspection, this problem reveals itself to be an interesting challenge of discrete and computational geometry with all its surprising structural forms and regularities. This book summarizes results achieved in solving the circle packing problem over the past few years, providing the reader with a comprehensive view of both theoretical and computational achievements. Typically illustrations of problem solutions are shown, elegantly displaying the results obtained. Beyond the theoretically challenging character of the problem, the solution methods developed in the book also have many practical applications. One especially important feature of the book is the inclusion on an enclosed CD of all the open source programming codes used. Since the codes can be worked with directly, they will enable the reader to improve on them and solve problem instances that still remain challenging, or to use them as a starting point for solving related application problems.