Modeling contact/impact of flexible manipulators with a fixed rigid surface

A new technique for modeling contact/impact of flexible manipulators with a fixed rigid surface is presented. The manipulator is discretized using the finite element method. The technique is based on the use of the conservation of energy and momentum principles as a local velocity constraint on the nodes in contact with the rigid surface to obtain the post-impact velocities of those nodes. Two friction parameters one for the tangential momentum and one for energy can be used. A slight variation of the technique is to use the momentum conservation principle along with Newton´s collision rule as the velocity constraint also with two friction parameters one for the tangential momentum and the coefficient of restitution. Momentum conservation/Newton collision rule constraint and momentum/energy conservation constraint are equivalent if friction effects are neglected. Numerical examples are solved to show the accuracy and versatility of the new technique