Design and passability study of soil-plowing wheel facing soft terrain

Abstract

On soft terrain, the rover wheels are easy to slip, sink, or even fail to move. This paper designs a soil-plowing wheel which is two-sided closed and without tread. The discrete element simulation shows that the wheel could grasp soil through both sides and plowing soil and that the ability to gain drawbar pull is not significantly reduced. The wheel is fabricated and tested to measure its sinkage, slip rate and drawbar pull. The wheel has high sinking, high slip and high drawbar pull. And the wheel is tested to verify the passability on five terrains of flat ground, climbing, out of sinkage, obstacle crossing and hard ground. The wheel exhibits good passability in all terrains. The soil-plowing wheel is tested verify the passability on three terrains of obstacle crossing, out of sinkage and climbing and using a three-rockers six-wheels rover. The wheel can pass through all terrain. More importantly, the wheel has an excellent ability to get out of sinkage. And it takes only 25.43 s for all six wheels to get out of sinkage. It is believed that the structure and test results of this wheel are valuable for the subsequent development of unmanned rover wheel.