arXiv2026
Contact Hamiltonian dynamics gives dissipative mechanics an intrinsic action variable, but explicit contact splittings reach only kinetic energies whose terms are exactly integrable: frozen-coordinate diagonal metrics (the spherical pendulum, a torus particle) are included, while dense metrics with momentum cross terms, with the double pendulum as flagship, are not. We introduce a projected Pihajoki-contact integrator for this non-separable setting, combining phase-space duplication, symmetric projection onto the physical diagonal, and constant-friction damping half-steps, with the action factor carried by an exact Herglotz update. As in the projected extended-phase-space framework it builds on, the construction needs no binding parameter, returns the copies to the diagonal at every step, and confines the nonlinear solve to the $2n$ projection variables. For constant friction the step rescales $ω=dη$ by the exact factor $e^{-γτ}$ when the projection is solved exactly (a classical conformally symplectic identity, realized here for this class), while time-symmetry, consistency, and smoothness yield an $O(τ^3)$ one-step contact-form residual, a bound not specific to the contact form. On the damped double pendulum, spherical pendulum, and torus particle the method is second-order accurate, reproduces the contact decay law, and controls long-time energy and contact drift in coarse or stiff regimes where the Tao baseline and the unprojected average lose the solution. A head-to-head with exact-contactomorphism splittings delimits the niche: where a frozen-coordinate splitting exists it preserves the contact form exactly and wins at matched cost; for the dense double-pendulum metric the realizable alternative is first-order with a prohibitive constant and the projected method prevails. The contact-form estimate is local, one-step, and constant-friction.