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Determining Wheel-Soil Interaction Loads Using a Meshfree Finite Element Approach Assisting Future Missions with Rover Wheel DesignA wheel experiencing sinkage and slippage events poses a high risk to rover missions as evidenced by recent mobility challenges on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project. Because several factors contribute to wheel sinkage and slippage conditions such as soil composition, large deformation soil behavior, wheel geometry, nonlinear contact forces, terrain irregularity, etc., there are significant benefits to modeling these events to a sufficient degree of complexity. For the purposes of modeling wheel sinkage and slippage at an engineering scale, meshfree finite element approaches enable simulations that capture sufficient detail of wheel-soil interaction while remaining computationally feasible. This study demonstrates some of the large deformation modeling capability of meshfree methods and the realistic solutions obtained by accounting for the soil material properties. A benchmark wheel-soil interaction problem is developed and analyzed using a specific class of meshfree methods called Reproducing Kernel Particle Method (RKPM). The benchmark problem is also analyzed using a commercially available finite element approach with Lagrangian meshing for comparison. RKPM results are comparable to classical pressure-sinkage terramechanics relationships proposed by Bekker-Wong. Pending experimental calibration by future work, the meshfree modeling technique will be a viable simulation tool for trade studies assisting rover wheel design.
Document ID
20150008760
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Contreras, Michael T.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Peng, Chia-Yen
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Wang, Dongdong
(Xiamen Univ. China)
Chen, Jiun-Shyan
(California Univ. Los Angeles, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
May 26, 2015
Publication Date
August 13, 2012
Subject Category
Spacecraft Design, Testing And Performance
Numerical Analysis
Meeting Information
Meeting: AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Co-located Conference
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Country: United States
Start Date: August 13, 2012
End Date: August 16, 2012
Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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