Dealing with multiple contacts in a human-in-the-loop application

This paper deals with continuous contact force models applied to the human-in-the-loop simulation of multibody systems, while the results are valid in general to all the real-time applications with contacts. The contact model proposed in this work is suited to collisions between massive solids for which the assumption of quasi-static contact holds, and it can be supposed that the deformation is limited to a small region of the colliding bodies while the remainder of them are assumed to be rigid. The model consists of two components: normal compliance with nonlinear viscoelastic model based on the Hertz law, and tangential friction force based on Coulomb’s law including sticktion and a viscous friction component. Furthermore, the model takes into account the geometry and the material of the colliding bodies. The tangential model is a novel contribution while the normal model is completely taken from previous works. For this work, the formulation of the equations of motion is an augmented Lagrangian with projections of velocities and accelerations onto their constraints manifolds and implicit integrator. The whole solution proposed is tested in three applications: the first one is the simulation of a spring–mass system with Coulomb’s friction, which is an academic problem with known analytical solution; the second one is the Bowden and Leben stick–slip experiment; the third one is a simulator of a hydraulic excavator Liebherr A924, which is a realistic application that gives an idea of the capabilities of the method proposed.