In this paper, frictional impact dynamics is proposed for the flexible manipulator arms with high-order rigid-flexible coupling effect. Firstly, the system here is an assembly of n flexible links connected by n rotary joints. All link flexibility, namely transversal, longitudinal, torsional and high-order flexible-rigid coupling deformation are included in this model. The 4×4 homogeneous transformation matrices are used to describe the kinematics of system and the recursive strategy for kinematics is adopted. Secondly, the contact/detachment is developed in a consistent manner by introducing the concept of impact force potential energy. The Hertz contact model is utilized to obtain the normal impact force. The tangential impact force is carried out in a smooth processing by modified Coulomb’s friction laws. The continue approach for contact/detachment and smoothed contact model are implemented as an explicit formulation which is suitable for real-time applications and improving the global dynamics computational efficiency for complex multi-body systems with frictional impact. Finally, a simplified model of Canadarm2 is illustrated to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the presented approach and algorithms.