A constraint-stabilized time-stepping approach for rigid multibody dynamics with joints, contact and friction

We present a method for achieving geometrical constraint stabilization for a linear‐complementarity‐based time‐stepping scheme for rigid multibody dynamics with joints, contact, and friction. The method requires the solution of only one linear complementarity problem per step. We prove that the velocity stays bounded and that the constraint infeasibility is uniformly bounded in terms of the size of the time step and the current value of the velocity. Several examples, including one for joint‐only systems, are used to demonstrate the constraint stabilization effect. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.