The "auction" algorithm

The green group of rods undergoes the same procedure as the yellow group in the previous slide. Note that a new contact is established between one of the overloading green upper rods and the formerly underloaded lower rod. The stud transmitting the force for that contact is obstructed from us by upper rods, so it is marked in dashed red lines.

Now the machine came to the equilibrium: contacts between rods are made on one-to-one basis and there are no over- or underloaded lower rods. This means the assignment problem has been solved (for details refer to Section 4.2 and Appendix C of astro-ph/0304214). The algorithm has thus terminated.

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