Saint-Venant's conjecture on fail points

From papers

Let Ω\Omega be a convex planar domain symmetric about the two coordinate axes. A fail point is a point where uΩ|\nabla u_{\Omega}| attains its maximum, where uΩu_{\Omega} is the torsion function. The largest inscribed circle is a circle of maximal radius contained in Ω\Omega.

Saint-Venant's conjecture. Fail points occur at the contact points of the largest inscribed circle.

Kawohl proved this under the additional assumption that the curvature on Ω\partial\Omega is monotonic in the first quadrant. Ramaswamy and Sweers later disproved the conjecture by constructing domains symmetric about two axes whose long and short axes have equal length but whose endpoints have different curvatures.

Progress summary

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Qinfeng Li, Shuangquan Xie, Hang Yang and Ruofei Yao, “On the location of the maximal gradient of the torsion function over some non-symmetric planar domains”, arXiv:2406.04790 (2026).

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