On relating the disconnectedness of a contact formation to the geometric properties of its constituent objects

An object with certain geometric features, when it is in contact with another object, may cause disjoint regions of contact configurations under the same topological contact formation (CF). In this paper we analyze such geometric features and introduce the concept of limiting channel element of CF-compliance (LIMITEL). We further develop a simple algorithm for finding potential LIMITELs of an arbitrary polygon that may cause disjoint regions of contact configurations, given a second, contacting polygon. The algorithm is purely geometric and assumes exact knowledge of the geometries of the objects