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Expansion and Experimental Evaluation of Scaling Relations for the Prediction of Wheel Performance in Reduced Gravity

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Abstract

Traversing granular regolith, especially in reduced gravity environments, remains a potential challenge for wheeled rovers. Mitigating hazards for planetary exploration rovers requires testing in representative environments, but direct Earth-based testing fails to account for the effect of reduced gravity on the soil itself. Granular scaling laws (GSL) have been proposed in the literature to predict performance of a larger wheel based on tests with a smaller wheel, or to predict performance in one gravity level based on tests in another gravity level. However, this is the first work to experimentally validate GSL in reduced gravity. Here, an expanded version of existing GSL was evaluated experimentally by measuring performance of a single wheel driving through cohesionless lunar soil simulant GRC-1 aboard parabolic flights that reproduce the effects of lunar gravity, and comparing those results to scaled tests performed on the ground. This scaled-wheel testing achieved less than 10% prediction error on three measured output metrics: drawbar pull (i.e. net traction), sinkage, and power draw. Predictions also erred on the conservative side. Subsurface soil imaging revealed similar soil behavior between scaled tests. GSL thus offers an accurate and conservative method for predicting wheel performance in reduced gravity based on 1-g experiments, at least in cohesionless soil.

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Data Availability

All datasets generated and analyzed during the current study (except the video/image data, due to large file sizes), along with processing code, are available in a GitHub repository: https://github.com/adrianadaca/MGST-data-and-processing-code. Video datasets are available from the corresponding author on request.

Notes

  1. True rate-independence would be achieved at \(\text {Fr}\le 10^{-3}\) (Henann and Kamrin 2016).

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Acknowledgements

This project was undertaken with the financial support of the Canadian Space Agency, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Nature et Technologies (FRQNT). The authors thank Canada’s National Research Council Flight Research Laboratory, especially Derek ‘‘Duff’’ Gowanlock and Shahrukh Alavi, for facilitating the parabolic flight campaign. The authors would also like to thank Pierre-Lucas Aubin-Fournier for 3D printing the rigid wheels.

Funding

The authors disclose receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: This work was supported by the Canadian Space Agency [grant number 19FACONB28] and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [grant numbers 950-230594, 950-232803, RGPIN-2015-2015-06046].

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  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia University, 1455 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, EV-5.139, Montreal, H3G 1M8, Quebec, Canada

    Adriana Daca, Dominique Tremblay & Krzysztof Skonieczny

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  1. Adriana Daca
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Contributions

K.S. and A.D. conceived of the presented idea. A.D. performed the experiments, analyzed the results, and wrote the manuscript. D.T. modified the experimental apparatus, assisted with setting up the experiments, and supported the analysis. K.S. encouraged A.D. to investigate this topic and supervised the findings of this work. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Krzysztof Skonieczny.

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Daca, A., Tremblay, D. & Skonieczny, K. Expansion and Experimental Evaluation of Scaling Relations for the Prediction of Wheel Performance in Reduced Gravity. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 35, 59 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-023-10087-4

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