A new contact searching algorithm for contact-impact systems is proposed in this paper. In terms of the cell structure and the linked-list, this algorithm solves the problem of sorting and searching contacts in three dimensions by transforming it to a retereving process from two one-dimensional arrays, and binary searching is no longer required. Using this algorithm, the cost of contact searching is reduced to the order of O(N) instead of O (Nlog2N)for traditional ones, where N is the node number in the system. Moreover, this algorithm can handle contact systems with arbitrary mesh layouts. Due to the simplicity of this algorithm it can be easily implemented in a dynamic explicit finite element program. Our numerical experimental result shows that this algorithm is reliable and effcient for contact searching of three dimensional systems.