An inequality on the edge lengths of triangular meshes (Q621924)

The author proves that, for any two triangular meshes \(A\) and \(B\) of the same polygon \(C\), the maximum length of an edge in \(A\) is at least the minimum distance between two vertices in \(B\) given that the number of vertices in \(A\) is at most the number of vertices in \(B\). The polygon must not be self-intersecting but may be non-convex and may even have holes. Counter examples are given to show that two similar results are not true. Namely, the maximum edge length of \(A\) is not necessarily at least the minimum edge length of \(B\); the maximum triangle perimeter of \(A\) is not necessarily at least the minimum triangle perimeter of \(B\). This result is useful in proving performance guarantees of mesh generation algorithms for finite element analysis.