🤖 AI Summary
Modeling collision and impact in multibody systems coupled with deformable structures remains challenging due to ambiguous constitutive relationships and the non-smooth dynamics induced by multiple unilateral constraints.
Method: This paper proposes a unified dynamical modeling framework that integrates rigid-body impact theory with soft-contact constitutive laws. The framework explicitly embeds elastic connectors and unilateral constraints, enabling systematic analysis of how unilateral spring stiffness, damping, and related parameters govern impulse transmission, energy dissipation, and contact-state transitions. A hybrid numerical implementation synergizes rigid-body dynamics with continuum-based contact models to robustly resolve multi-point non-smooth impacts.
Results: Validation across multiple benchmark cases demonstrates that the proposed model significantly outperforms conventional approaches in impact response accuracy, contact-state tracking fidelity, and consistency of energy evolution. It establishes a new paradigm for complex coupled impact systems—offering both physical interpretability and computational robustness.
📝 Abstract
Collisions and impacts are the principal reasons for impulsive motions, which we frequently see in dynamic responses of systems. Precise modelling of impacts is a challenging problem due to the lack of the accurate and commonly accepted constitutive law that governs their mechanics. Rigid-body approach and soft contact methods are discussed in this paper and examined in the presented numerical examples. The main focus is set to impacts in systems with multiple unilateral contacts and collisions with elastic elements of the reference. Parameters of interconnecting unilateral springs are under discussion.