For providing the theory basis for wheel configuration design and motion control, the rolling and steering mechanical models were developed to analyze the effect of wheel parameters on motion performance of lunar rover. And then the curves which illustrated the dependence of wheel motion performance on the wheel parameters, were deduced. The analysis results indicated that increasing the wheel diameter was more effective than increasing wheel width in enhancing the drawbar pull. In contrast, steering maneuverability was significantly affected by the wheel width. Furthermore, the dimensionless evaluation indexes were carried out to study the effect of wheel parameters on its motion performance. Five samples with different wheel width-diameter ration, namely 0.4, 0.45, 0.5, 0.55 and 0.6, were taken as the analysis object to compute the performance values such as traction performance, steering performance and overall performance index. The results revealed that the samples exhibited different superiority in single evaluation index. However, the value of comprehensive evaluation index decreases with the increasing width-diameter ratio and its maximum value appeared at about 20% slip.
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