Stability of finite-dimensional nonlinear elastic systems with unilateral contact and friction

This paper addresses some questions in the general area of the instability of ®nite-dimensional elastic systems in unilateral frictional contact with rigid obstacles. We study the occurrence of dynamic solutions in the neighborhood of a given equilibrium state which might tend to diverge from that state. Some of the results obtained by Martins et al. (1998) are generalized here to encompass the e€ects of the system nonlinear elastic behavior and of the obstacle curvature