A GPU-BASED IMPLEMENTATION OF A CONE CONVEX COMPLEMENTARITY APPROACH FOR SIMULATING RIGID BODY DYNAMICS WITH FRICTIONAL CONTACT

In the context of simulating the frictional contact dynamics of large systems of rigid bodies, this paper reviews a novel method for solving large cone complementarity problems by means of a fixed-point iteration algorithm. The method is an extension of the Gauss-Seidel and Gauss-Jacobi methods with over-relaxation for symmetric convex linear complementarity, problems. Convergent under fairly standard assumptions, the method is implemented in a parallel framework by using a single instruction multiple data computation paradigm promoted by the Compute Unified Device Architecture library for graphical processing unit programming. The framework supports the analysis of problems with a large number of rigid bodies in contact. Simulation thus becomes a viable tool for investigating the dynamics of complex systems such as ground vehicles running on sand, powder composites, and granular material flow.