Multidisciplinary Design Optimization for a Solar-Powered Exploration Rover Considering the Restricted Power Requirement

Kun-Jung Kim and Kee-Ho Yu
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Kun-Jung Kim: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonbuk, Jeonju 54896, Korea
Kee-Ho Yu: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonbuk, Jeonju 54896, Korea

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 24, 1-28

Abstract: The energy requirements of a solar-powered exploration rover constrain the mission duration, traversability, and tractive capability under the given limited usable power. Thus, exploration rover design, more specifically, rover wheel design (related to considerable energy consumption in driving), plays a significant role in the success of exploration missions. This paper describes the modeling of an operational environment and a multi-body dynamics (MBD) simulation tool based on wheel-terrain interaction model to predict the dynamic behavior on a digital elevation model (DEM) map. With these simulation environments, a multidisciplinary optimal wheel design methodology, integrating the MBD simulation tool and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II), is developed. Design parameters are chosen through sensitivity analysis. These multi-objective optimizations in dynamic states are conducted to obtain the optimal wheel dimension that meet the limited power condition with maximal tractive capability under the given operational environment. Furthermore, numerical and experimental verification using a single wheel testbed on lunar simulant are conducted to convincingly validate the derived optimization results. Finally, these results reveal that the proposed design methodology is an effective approach to deciding the best design parameter among a large variety of candidate design points considering the restricted power requirement.

Keywords: multi-objective design optimization; solar-powered exploration rover; operational environment; multi-body dynamics (MBD); wheel-soil interaction; single wheel testbed (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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