An improved compliant contact force model using a piecewise function for impact analysis in multibody dynamics

Contact-impact problems have attracted more and more attention in mechanical multibody systems. In the past period of time, a few compliant contact force models have been put forward. However, some compliant contact force models are only applicable to a specific range of coefficient of restitution impact problems. And, some compliant contact force models have large errors with the actual situation. In order to reduce the errors, an improved compliant contact force model is proposed in this paper, which is applicable to the whole range of coefficient of restitution impact problems. In this work, the permanent deformation is taken into account during the contact process. Meanwhile, the method of piecewise fitting is used to reduce the errors in numerical solutions. Therefore, the improved compliant contact force model uses a piecewise function for the whole range of coefficient of restitution. In order to illustrate the situation, six independent contact force models are numerically analyzed by using Matlab codes. The result shows that the improved compliant contact force model in this paper is applicable to both soft and hard impact and nearer to the actual situation.