[igraph] Need igraph to generate foam networks

[Prabhakar Marepalli]

Hi All,

I'm a student in Mechanical Engineering working on simulating thermal transport in foam like structures.
We have an idea of converting a physical foam into a resistance network that looks very similar to
some of the graphs that can be generated by igraph. I'm attaching a picture of what I mean by the
conversion process. As I was looking for tools that can generate graphs that look like the network
I wanted, I found igraph and it seems to be very powerful in terms of features it have. I went through 
the tutorial and found that the automatic graph generation part is what I need to focus on. But I have
few question that I couldn't find answers for. Can any of you please let me know if the following is
possible in igraph:

1) I need to generate automatic graphs that satisfy some overall properties (like heat flux in my case).
    In the process, is it possible to specify geometric constraints on how the edges are arranged.
    More specifically:

     a) Can I constrain the lengths of all the edges to a given value?
     b) Can I constrain the orientation of edges such that they look like the real physical foam ?
        (Think of it as constraining the edges such that they form adjacent structural frames each of which look like a sphere)

2) Do you know of anyone who worked on a similar idea ?

Thanks a lot
Prabhakar

foam_network.png
Description: PNG image