Strong stress-flex conjecture for coned frameworks over closed PL surfaces

Let SS be a closed piecewise-linear surface, and let (GS,p)(G_S^\star,\boldsymbol p) be its coned framework: the framework has the vertices and edges of SS, together with a cone vertex pp_\star joined to every vertex of SS. A first-order flex is an infinitesimal motion preserving the edge lengths to first order, and a stress ω\boldsymbol\omega is an equilibrium stress of this framework. Strong stress-flex conjecture. If p˙\dot{\boldsymbol p} is any first-order flex with p˙=0\dot p_\star=0, and ω\boldsymbol\omega is any stress of (GS,p)(G_S^\star,\boldsymbol p), then

iωip˙i=0.\sum_i \omega_{\star i}\dot p_i=0.

The paper describes this as a stronger version of the weak stress-flex conjecture, suggested by experiments and expected to hold in substantially greater generality than the polytope case resolved in the article. Its general validity remains open.

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Primary source

Eleni Pachyli, Roman Prosanov and Martin Winter, “Second-order rigidity of coned polytope frameworks and the stress-flex conjecture from a vector-valued Schläfli formula”, arXiv:2607.14878 (2026).

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