A nonsmooth method for spatial frictional contact dynamics of flexible multibody systems with large deformation

Abstract A nonsmooth contact dynamics computation methodology for spatial frictional contact dynamics of flexible multibody systems with large deformation is presented. The contact and friction conditions between contact bodies are formulated as a cone complementary problem (CCP). Based on the mortar discretization method, nonsmooth frictional contact formulations for surface‐to‐surface and beam‐to‐beam contact problems are derived. These formulations can be used to study a wide range of contact problems between three‐dimensional bodies, thin plates and beams. The nonsmooth multibody dynamics equations are solved by using the generalized‐ method. The CCP is solved by using the accelerated projected gradient descend (APGD) algorithm in each Newton's iteration. Finally, six numerical examples are provided to validate the proposed computation methodology.