k-irreducible triangulations of 2-manifolds

This thesis deals with k-irreducible triangulations of closed, compact 2-manifolds without boundary. A triangulation is k-irreducible, if all its closed cycles of length less than k are nullhomotopic and no edge can be contracted without losing this property. k-irreducibility is a generalization of the well-known concept of irreducibility, and can be regarded as a measure of how closely the triangulation approximates a smooth version of the underlying surface. Research follows three main questions: What are lower and upper bounds for the minimum and maximum size of a k-irreducible triangulation? What are the smallest and biggest explicitly constructible examples? Can one achieve complete classifications for specific 2-manifolds, and fixed k