On a Covering Problem for Equilateral Triangles

Let T be a unit equilateral triangle, and T1, . . . , Tn be n equilateral triangles that cover T and satisfy the following two conditions: (i) Ti has side length ti (0 < ti < 1); (ii) Ti is placed with each side parallel to a side of T . We prove a conjecture of Zhang and Fan asserting that any covering that meets the above two conditions (i) and (ii) satisfies ∑n i=1 ti ≥ 2. We also show that this bound cannot be improved.