A conical interior point method for nonsmooth rigid body dynamics

Abstract

Reliable computer simulations of an excavation process can drastically reduce the cost for the product design of excavator buckets. Discrete Element Methods have proven valuable for the simulation of soil, yet they are only stable if the time step sizes are very small. A nonsmooth formulation of rigid body dynamics on the other hand is stable for much larger time step sizes. To predict draft forces in a simulation, nonsmooth rigid body dynamics rely on very effective numerical tools for high accuracy. In our contribution we provide a stringent derivation of the nonsmooth equations of motion for perfectly rigid bodies, and we propose a conical Interior Point Method as a solution technique for them