A Gas-Driven Algorithm for Variants of the Moving Sofa Problem

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical algorithm based on the idea of dynamical systems for solving the moving sofa problem. By introducing a physical model driven by gas pressure, we transform the geometric optimization problem into a dynamical system. Numerical experiments show that the method effectively approximates the known Gerver's sofa result, and provides numerical estimates of the possible maximum area for corridors with different angles. In particular, we observe an intersection of the two motion patterns at $43.327\ldots^\circ$, where the locally maximal sofa area is $1.8674\ldots$, and the dominant pattern switches on either side of this critical angle.