A Bound Below 2.8 for Tuza's Conjecture

Let $ν(G)$ be the maximum number of edge-disjoint triangles in a graph $G$ and $τ(G)$ the minimum number of edges meeting every triangle. Tuza conjectured that $τ(G)\le 2ν(G)$. We prove that $τ(G)\le (165/59)ν(G)$. The constant $165/59\approx 2.797$ improves the bound $66/23\approx 2.870$ that Haxel