Disk packing for the estimation of the size of a wire bundle

A heuristic method for packing disks in a circle is constructed, and is applied to the estimation of the sizes of holes through which given sets of electric wires are to pass. Modern intelligent machines such as planes and cars have a variety of electric systems, and consequently a lot of electric wires run in a complicated way. These wires should pass through holes opened in the walls of the body of a machine. Those wholes should be as small as possible because larger holes weaken the body. The problem of finding the smallest hole is reduced to the problem of finding the smallest circle containing all of given disks without overlap. In the proposed method, a sufficiently large circle is initially constructed, and it is shrunk step by step while keeping all the disks inside. For this purpose a Voronoi diagram for circles is used. Computational experiments show the validity and the efficiency of the method.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]