Hi all,
I am experiencing the following odd behavior with collisions. Here is my setup:
I have a space capsule "A", docking to a space station through a docking adapter "B". The space station itself is an assembly of Newton objects, each itself a compound collision, connected using "hard" hinges. There are 13 Newton objects forming a space station assembly, starting with object "B" (docking adapter) and ending with habitation modules "C" and "D".
The space capsule "A" is aligned with the docking adapter "B" and it approaches it very slowly along the longitudinal axis, with the aim of connecting and docking. The parts in the compound collisions of both "A" and "B" where they come into contact are both flat, short cylinders, representing the docking rings of both objects. (almost like 2 coins coming to contact face to face)
The problem is, when they slowly approach and eventually come into contact, object "A" reacts rather violently to the collision, pitching upwards in unnatural way. I have worked on this methodically, trying to figure out where the problem is, and after a quite a bit of detective work, found out that the culprits are objects "C" and "D" - if I remove them, the collision behaves properly. Moreover, I found out that the mass of "C"/"D" was the problem.
If mass of objects "C" or "D" was decreased, the collision behaved properly. The "breaking point" of the mass value was somewhere between 15000 and 16000 kg (at 15000kg, collision works, at 16000kg, it misbehaves - I didn't go further to determine exact threshold)
Clearly, there is something in the solver that is not liking larger mass objects, be it the mass of single body, or somehow the mass of the whole assembly, reaching some kind of threshold.
Any idea why this would be happening?