Development And Experiment Of Test-Bed Of Wheel-Soil Interaction For Lunar Rover

Lunar exploration plays an important role in national economical and military development. Many countries in the world begin to do research on this project. In order to explore the moon and carry out science experiments, a lunar rover with high performance is necessary. The performance of the lunar rover depends mostly on the performance of the lunar rover's wheel, so it is crucial to study the mechanic performance of wheel of lunar rover. Now some universities and institutes have made some prototypes of the lunar rovers and their wheels in China, but the wheel's mechanic performance is seldom studied and tested until now. This paper will analyze the mechanic performance of the wheel and design a test-bed to test the performance of the lunar rover's wheel.Firstly, the mechanic characteristics of the soil are separated to press-sinkage characteristic and shear characteristic based on Bekker's theory. A mechanic model when the rigid wheel of lunar rover rolling on soft soil was constructed based Bekker's press-sinkage and Janosi's shear-displacement models. Also a mechanic model when the rigid wheel of lunar rover steering on soft soil was proposed based on the theory of Lankine passive earth pressure.Secondly, a scheme of test-bed was proposed based on the analysis of the test-bed developed by the foreign countries. The test-bed contains two parts: mechanical structure of the test-bed and data acquisition system of the test-bed, which is used to test the rolling mechanics and steering mechanics of wheel, respectively.Thirdly, the test-bed was developed successfully which has a friendly man-machine interface. The mechanic characteristics of a wheel were tested on the test-bed.