Experimental analysis on effect of grouser circumferential angle on motion performance of lunar rover wheel

LIU Ji-cheng, GAO Hai-bo, DENG Zong-quan

School of Mechatronics Engineering,Harbin Institute of Technology,Harbin 150001,China



Abstract:

To guide the design of grouser parameters for lunar rover wheel,the effect analysis of circumferential angle of grousers on motion performance of a rigid wheel was conducted in a laboratory single-wheel test bed with loose sand bin.All tests had been done at a free wheel sinkage.The circumferential angle was varied from 0°,5°,10°,15° to 20°.By the analysis and comparisons of tractive and steering performance between smooth wheels and wheels with different circumferential angle grousers,the results show that the drawbar pull(DP),driving torque(DT) and steering resistance moment(SRM) decrease slightly with the increasing circumferential angle.And chevron grousers are more beneficial to improve the tractive performance than herringbone grousers.In order to evaluate motion performance of wheels with grousers,the evaluation indexes of motion performance are introduced into the experimental results.The results reveal that the optimal circumferential angle is 0°,and the optimum value of wheel slip is 13% from the perspective of saving energy to the similar loose sand in the experiments.

Key words:  rover  wheel  circumferential angle  chevron grouser  herringbone grouser

DOI：10.11916/j.issn.1005-9113.2011.01.024

Clc Number:O39

Fund: