Wheel-soil interaction mechanics model for lunar rover: Decoupling and application

Aiming at the difficulties of applying highly coupled integrated model for wheel-soil interaction mechanics, a closed-form decoupled analytical model is derived by linearizing stress distribution and ignoring the coupled term with small proportion. Six kinds of wheels with different dimensions and wheel lugs were used to do experiments with wheel-soil interaction testbed. The soil parameter identification method is researched based on the decoupled model to estimate the eight unknown wheel-soil interaction parameters, and the method is verified by the experimental data. Due to the compensation role of identified parameters, the decoupled analytical model can predict the drawbar pull, resistance moment of driving, wheel sinkage and slip ratio with high precision, which makes it reasonable to be applied to dynamics simulation and control algorithm design of lunar rover.