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Trapezo-Rhombic Dodecahedron


TrapezoRhombicDodecahedron

The trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron, also called the rhombo-trapezoidal dodecahedron, is the Voronoi cell of a sphere center in ideal hexagonal close packing. Its six identical rhombi and six identical isosceles trapezoids form a convex, space-filling dodecahedron with D_(3h) symmetry.

It is implemented in Wolfram Language as PolyhedronData["TrapezoRhombicDodecahedron"].

TrapezoRhombicDodecahedronNet

Its net is illustrated above.

TrapezoRhombicDodecahedralGraph

A skeleton based on projecting from along the C_3 symmetry axis and rotating the inner and central points is illustrated above.

The Voronoi cells of the sphere centers in face-centered cubic packing are rhombic dodecahedra, while those in ideal hexagonal close packing are trapezo-rhombic dodecahedra (Steinhaus 1999, p. 206).

The trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron can be obtained from the rhombic dodecahedron by cutting through its center perpendicular to a threefold symmetry axis and rotating one half 60 degrees about that axis. The short and long edges of its trapezoids have lengths 2/3 and 4/3 times the edge length of the original rhombic faces.

The top and bottom edge lengths of the constituent trapezoids are a and 2a, with side lengths (corresponding to the rhombi edge lengths) of 3a/2. The acute angles of the trapezoids and rhombi therefore have angle measure of

alpha=sec^(-1)3
(1)
=70.52877... degrees
(2)
=1.230959....
(3)

(OEIS A137914).

The surface area and volume are given by

S=18sqrt(2)a^2
(4)
V=6sqrt(3)a^3,
(5)

and the central moment of inertia tensor of the solid with uniform density and mass M by

 I=3/4Ma^2I_3,
(6)

where I_3 is the 3×3 identity matrix. For unit mass and shortest edge length a=1, this is I=3/4I_3.


See also

Dodecahedron, Hexagonal Close Packing, Rhombic Dodecahedron, Space-Filling Polyhedron, Spherical Code, Voronoi Cell

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References

House of Graphs. "Trapezo-Rhombic Dodecahedral Graph." https://houseofgraphs.org/graphs/51480.Sloane, N. J. A. Sequence A137914 in "The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences."Steinhaus, H. Mathematical Snapshots, 3rd ed. New York: Dover, pp. 202-203, 1999.

Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha

Trapezo-Rhombic Dodecahedron

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Trapezo-Rhombic Dodecahedron." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Trapezo-RhombicDodecahedron.html

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