Structural computational analysis of conventional and self-designed rover wheel architectures for extraterrestrial roving application

Abstract The technical advancements in robotics have closely been followed by developments in aerospace excavation robots. This research elucidates self-designed shape memory alloy wheels for their use in Lunar Excavations, which attributes to the new era of space exploration robots. The wheel design proves to be of paramount importance as crucial operations such as mobility, steering, and traction control build upon wheel design. A comparison has been made between Aluminium alloy, Structural Steel, and Shape Memory alloy (Nitinol) wheels for both conventional and self-designed wheel architectures. Wheel architecture tests and their results are articulated with the aid of simulation. The significant performance parameters, primarily Total Deformation, Equivalent Stress, and Shear stress-induced, were analyzed, which articulates the performance of the wheel at the time of landing. It was observed that for both wheel designs: self-designed and conventional, the maximum total deformation was 0.011154 mm and 1.3573 mm, respectively, when Aluminium alloy was chosen as the base material. For Steel and Nitinol, the self-designed wheel structure proved to perform better than the conventional wheel design with lower values of total deformation (0.0041129 mm and 0.010968 mm, respectively).