Impact mechanics of elastic bodies with point contact

This paper introduces a modeling framework that is suitable to resolve singularities of impact phenomena encountered in applications. The method involves an exact transformation that turns the continuum, often partial differential equation description of the contact problem into a delay differential equation. The new form of the physical model highlights the source of singularities and suggests a simple criterion for regularity. To contrast singular and regular behavior the impacting Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam models are compared.