The wheel end closure optimization of two-wheeled lunar rover

The capability of the lunar rover driving off the lander successfully and restoring to well-balanced state from unsteady state is very important to fulfill the exploration. The design method is presented to improving the two-wheeled lunar roverpsilas capability of anti-overturning, the spherical crown end closure is adopted by the design of wheel. The mathematics model is built to describe the necessary factor of anti-overturning and quantitative relations of end closure radius, rover weight and sinkage. An optimization method is introduced in detail to maximize the radius of end closure in order to meet the minimum of roverpsilas transverse length. The quantitative analysis between radius and sensitive factors is presented, which is a principle for the design of wheel end closure and the rover. The calculated results show that increasing the moment radius compared to increasing the ratio of moment weight to gross weight is benefit to increasing the wheel end closure radius.