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

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-alpha$$ \alpha $$ 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.