The goal was to determine the best possible way to traverse the lunar regolith for a distance of at least 500 meters. To do this we began with the general process of breaking down the project into a set of goals for the locomotion, and coming up with the best possible solution for these goals. The goals we developed for the project were to make a wheel and motor system which would be able to travel the distance, survive the lunar environment, be as light as possible, and to be energy efficient.
Through our research, we were able to determine that the best possible way to accomplish our goals was to make an in-wheel motor design with a multi-v tread. The reasons that we decided on the in-wheel motor tread is because it gives the rover the best torque control and is a more energy efficient system than a centralized system. We decided to go with a V tread design as this would give us the best traction in the lunar regolith. After further consideration, the tread was changed to a multi-V to make sure that it could travel in forward or reverse efficiently. This gave us a basic idea of how the wheel needed to be made. Finally, we needed to decide which material to make the wheel out of. After doing the research, our group decided that using aluminum 6061. This material gives us the needed strength and gives us favorable thermal qualities.
Next, we needed to build a model of our design using SolidWorks and run stress analysis on it to be able to determine if our design would be able to handle the strains which were placed on it. CosmosWorks was used to get the stress models and the factor of safety for the model. These confirmed that our design was able to handle the loads which would be placed on it. These can be seen in the stress analysis photos.
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