A novel off-road tire model for planetary rover applications is created to investigate the mobility of such exploration vehicles. A volumetric contact model in series with a hyperelastic Bekker soil model is used to derive the contact forces between a deformable tire and soft soil. The volumetric off-road tire model is derived for a cylinder rolling on flat ground, and the rolling resistance can be directly calculated from the volumetric contact model. The longitudinal and lateral tire forces are calculated by integrating the shear stress over the contact patch. To check the consistency of the tire model, it is simulated using a simplified 14 degree of freedom model often used in vehicle dynamics simulations. The results are compared against those of a conventional rigid tire simulated under the same conditions. The deformable tire is shown to generate a 34% higher traction force than the rigid tire. In another steering scenario, the feasibility of this model for handling anyalses is verified.
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