Two issues here... one is my general uncertainty as to using relative velocity as a merging criteria, or if we can't monitor a relative velocity energy. Should probably look like
v^T (J M^{-1} J^T )^{-1} v
Where J maps the two bodies to a combined COM frame, and v has the relative velocities computed in this frame.
Anyway, the other issue is that in watching the spinner, while the linear velocity was what was keeping the bodies from merging, I was surprised to see that the angular velocity had a fairly large mis-match, on the order of 0.01 rad/sec. Perhaps 1000 PGS iterations is not enough? Might be worth another look to see if this kind of innacuracy is expected, perhaps using a spinner with larger blocks?
Two issues here... one is my general uncertainty as to using relative velocity as a merging criteria, or if we can't monitor a relative velocity energy. Should probably look like
v^T (J M^{-1} J^T )^{-1} v
Where J maps the two bodies to a combined COM frame, and v has the relative velocities computed in this frame.
Anyway, the other issue is that in watching the spinner, while the linear velocity was what was keeping the bodies from merging, I was surprised to see that the angular velocity had a fairly large mis-match, on the order of 0.01 rad/sec. Perhaps 1000 PGS iterations is not enough? Might be worth another look to see if this kind of innacuracy is expected, perhaps using a spinner with larger blocks?