A contact searching algorithm for contact-impact problems

Abstract

A new contact searching algorithm for contact-impact systems is proposed in this paper. In terms of the cell structure and the linked-list, this algorithm solves the problem of sorting and searching contacts in three dimensions by transforming it to a retrieving process from two one-dimensional arrays, and binary searching is no longer required. Using this algorithm, the cost of contact searching is reduced to the order of O(N) instead of O(Nlog2N ) for traditional ones, where N is the node number in the system. Moreover, this algorithm can handle contact systems with arbitrary mesh layouts. Due to the simplicity of this algorithm it can be easily implemented in a dynamic explicit finite element program. Our numerical experimental result shows that this algorithm is reliable and efficient for contact searching of three dimensional systems.

Packing spherical discrete elements for large scale simulations

“…Nevertheless, the estimated loci are sometimes so coarse that the procedure fails. To increase the chances of placing a sphere close to p, a list of spheres sorted from nearest to farthest [11] is used to build several fourspheres sets. The geometric procedure is then applied with these sets until it can be placed in agreement with the user constraints.…”

A Local Contact Detection Technique for Very Large Contact and Self-Contact Problems: Sequential and Parallel Implementations

“…The grid (bucket) detection method [1,4] is natural and simple. But its implementation and choice of the internal parameters should be discussed in more details.…”

“…The techniques which have been worked out for contact detection are aimed at the reduction of quantity of points to "touch". Among these methods there are the bucket method [1,4], the heapsort and the octree method [10] and others. The two last algorithms have been developed mainly for the multibody simulations, i.e.…”

A constrained‐optimization methodology for the detection phase in contact mechanics simulations

“…In order to avoid the time complexity associated with checking a slave node against every element on the master surface, a simple grid space decomposition is used to reduce the search region to those elements in the neighborhood of the slave node. Details of this technique, which is referred in the literature as a bucket search , can be found in . The survey zone consists of 211 × 211 × 9 buckets, with 20,589 and 115,499 non‐empty node and element buckets, respectively.…”

“…By dividing the search space into buckets, the time complexity of the contact detection is significantly reduced compared with the naive all‐to‐all algorithm. The bucket search is also described thoroughly by Heinstein et al , who further describe an alternative search methodology based on binary sorting of nodes, and by Fujun et al , who used a node‐to‐surface discretization for local detections and linked‐lists for the placement of nodes into buckets. Malone and Johnson describe a detection methodology based on search planes of the faces of FEs .…”