This paper formally introduces several stability characterizations of £xtured three-dimensional rigid bodies initially at rest and in unilateral contact with Coulomb friction. These characterizations, weak stability and strong stability, arise naturally from the dynamic model of the system, formulated as a complementarity problem. Using the tools of complementarity theory, these characterizations are studied in detail to understand their properties and to develop techniques to identify the stability classi£cations of general systems subjected to known external loads.
Jong-Shi Pang, Jeffrey C. Trinkle