Precision reducers couple contact geometry, bearing support, structural deformation, and loading history. This paper presents a dynamic toolkit connecting distributed local contacts to the complete mechanical reaction path. Work-conjugate maps transfer displacement, reaction, and tangent contributions between contacts and rigid or reduced coordinates, with explicit allocation of contact and body elasticity. An implicit generalized-alpha solution distinguishes trial evaluations from accepted history. Contact records then support performance protocols and configured geometric or constitutive feedback. The numerical studies focus on mechanical coupling and pressure recovery. An idealized annular housing retains physical interfaces while its structural coordinates are reduced. Two reductions with similar static errors have cross-port response errors of 24.975 and 0.312 percent over the same frequency band relative to a common parent model. In a shared-pin example, a 20 micrometer radial displacement of one wheel changes the load on a second, fixed wheel by approximately 75 N. Removing cross-station compliance removes this incremental transfer on the tested sleeve-seating branch. A double-wheel cycloidal assembly relates torsional branch response to aggregate contact-load variation and normalized pressure fields. The pressure maxima remain sensitive to resolution despite small discrete force residuals. Further formulations specify how motion and contact records support precision, vibration, heat, wear, and durability models with their required inputs. The framework separates model representation and numerical resolution while retaining common definitions of motion, force, and observation.
Existing approaches to frictional contact dynamics typically either modify the Coulomb law to improve numerical robustness or solve the exact law in a fully coupled monolithic form. However, in its reduced form, exact Coulomb friction can be written as a cone complementarity problem with an augmented velocity, which reveals a natural split between a cone-constrained linear response and a scalar non-associated coupling induced by tangential velocity. We exploit this structure in the solver design. Our method uses an outer iteration to update the non-associated coupling explicitly, and an inner solve for a strongly convex cone-constrained quadratic program. This separation also makes the inner solver modular, so different numerical schemes can be used without changing the outer iteration. We evaluate the method on rigid-body benchmarks with stick-slip transitions and frictional stacking, and show that it reproduces exact Coulomb complementarity without smoothing or relaxing the friction law.
A companion study introduced joint durability into the dimensional design of the Theo Jansen walking linkage and found its classical "holy numbers" Pareto-dominated, but it modelled the revolute joints as ideal, clearance-free pins, so its wear figures were relative rankings, not a prediction of in-service degradation. Here we relax that idealization. We build a forward-dynamic model of the Jansen leg in which a revolute joint becomes a clearance joint with a continuous normal contact law (Lankarani-Flores, hysteresis-damped) and Ambrosio friction, integrated as a constraint-stabilized differential-algebraic system, and couple it to the Archard law in a wear->clearance->impact feedback loop. Three findings emerge. First, neglecting clearance underestimates the peak joint load: the clearance model gives a peak contact force of ~104 N at the load-bearing pin against ~48 N for the ideal joint (~2x amplification), rising to ~426 N when two joints carry clearance at once. Second, the coupling is strongly impact-sensitive--single trajectories are non-monotonic and can reverse the design ranking, a chaos consistent with the literature--so designs must be compared statistically; over an ensemble of 16 randomized phases the optimized joint is robustly more durable, with per-cycle wear ~9-7x lower (peak force ~4x lower) at one clearance joint and still ~1.7x lower on both with two (p<0.01 throughout). Third, the wear is strongly non-uniform--it concentrates on a ~10 deg load arc--so assuming uniform clearance growth underestimates local clearance growth by ~36x. The clearance-free durability advantage thus survives the chaotic, multi-joint, non-uniformly-worn coupling in the ensemble mean. We deliver the first clearance-coupled forward-dynamic model of the Jansen leg and specify a falsifiable protocol to test each prediction.
Closed kinematic chains complicate modular modeling by coupling active and passive coordinates through nonlinear closure constraints. This paper presents a Path-Assembled Closure Differential Mapping (PACDM) framework for modular closure resolution and kinematic reduction. Each closure element compares two ordered transformation paths with common endpoints, with their mismatch expressed through the logarithm on SE(3) and the corresponding Jacobian assembled from local transformation derivatives. Multi-path modules are constructed from a minimal set of pairwise closure elements, while rank-revealing analysis selects locally independent scalar constraints. A defect homotopy recovers closure-consistent passive coordinates from approximate estimates along a feasible and regular continuation path. At regular configurations, implicit differentiation yields the local active-to-passive differential mapping, which is subsequently used in a predictor-corrector continuation procedure for prescribed motion. The framework is evaluated on a seven-degree-of-freedom heavy-duty manipulator containing two-path and three-path closed-chain modules. Comparison with Simscape Multibody yields trajectory root-mean-square errors below 8.5 x 10^-10 rad, while predictor-corrector continuation is approximately 45.8 times faster than applying defect homotopy at every trajectory sample.