Dynamics of a body sliding on a rough plane and supported at three points

This paper is concerned with the problem of a rigid body (tripod) moving with three points in contact with a horizontal plane under the action of dry friction forces. It is shown that the regime of asymptotic motion (final dynamics) of the tripod can be pure rotation, pure sliding, or sliding and rotation can cease simultaneously, which is determined by the position of the tripod’s supports relative to the radius of inertia. In addition, the dependence of the trajectory of the center of mass on the system parameters is investigated. A comparison is made with the well-known theoretical and experimental studies on the motion of bodies with a flat base