Design and Simulation of a Rover CanSat Non-pneumatic Wheel: Preliminary Study for a Certain Test Obstacle Path

The present research work develops the dynamic and structural simulation and design of a non-pneumatic wheel made of rigid neoprene rubber of a CanSat Rover for exploration and navigation in the 3D model path with different obstacles, in order to simulate the most precise interaction possible with the use of Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) simulation. The wheel design was inspired by honeycombs arrays and auxetic structures, so the current design provides some characteristics needed to pass obstacles easily, low weight prototypes and even have a better response against falls and abrupt bounces during exploration tasks typical of Rover CanSat robots oriented to aerospace education. The analysis will focus on evaluating and characterizing the wheel in terms of the kinetic and potential energy, accelerations, speeds and angular displacement that are generated in the wheel when passing through a rocky area. Besides, we carried out a structural simulation of the wheel which allowed to obtain deformations and Von Misses stress zones at different forces on the wheel.