An augmented Lagrangian frictional contact formulation for nonsmooth multibody systems

This work presents a frictional contact formulation for the transient simulation of non-smooth dynamic mechanical systems composed of rigid bodies, kinematic joints and contact conditions. More precisely, we extend the non-smooth generalized-alpha scheme to account for frictional contacts. The non-smooth generalized-alpha method imposes the constraints at position and velocity levels, preventing any non-physical penetration. The formulation and the numerical behaviour of the method for frictional contact problems are studied. Finally, its performance is evaluated for several numerical examples.