Minimal truncated octahedron

It was repeatedly proposed to use Kelvin s tetrakaidecahedron (that is, minimal truncated octahedron) [381, 407, 479] with eight hexagonal and six quadrangular faces as the polyhedral model of a foam cell and of a cell of any three-dimensional biological tissue. Note, however, that it was statistically shown [195] that Kelvin s tetrakaidecahedron is encountered in biological tissues among other tetrakaidecahedral cells only in 10% of the cases. 

The relatively small system size feasible in molecular simulation can have a large effect on the results [21,23]. To minimize such finite size effects, an infinite system is mimicked by appl3dng periodic boundary conditions. These conditions effectively create an infinite number of copies of the system in each direction. The cubic box is simplest to implement, but more complex tilings of space such as the truncated octahedron, or the dodecahedron results in smaller system sizes because they require fewer solvent molecules, and hence are more efficient [21,22]. 

Figure 12 (a) Planar tetrakaidecahedron (or truncated octahedron) (b) Kelvin s minimal tetrakaidecahedron (bcc). 

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