Numerical methods for multibody systems

This article gives a brief summary of some results obtained by Nasser on modeling and simulation of inequality problems in multibody dynamics. In particular, the augmented Lagrangian method discussed here is applied to a constrained motion problem with impulsive inequality constraints. A fundamental characteristic of the multibody dynamics problem is the lack of global convexity of its Lagrangian. The problem is transformed into a convex analysis problem by localization (piecewise linearization), where the augmented Lagrangian has been successfully used. A model test problem is considered and a set of numerical experiments is presented.