Design and Dynamic Analysis of the Wire-Line Coring Robot for Deep Lunar Rocks

Abstract

Deep lunar rocks carry geological information about the primitive Moon and are of great scientific value. In this paper, a coring robot for deep lunar rocks was proposed for the lunar environment based on the wire-line sampling device. This robot consists of the coring executor on the ground to assist in coring tube replacement and sample storage and the wireline self-excavating coring (WSC) robot for active drilling underground, which can provide autonomous deep coring on the moon. Subsequently, based on Prandtl’s failure mechanism and the prediction equations of the mechanical properties of the lunar soil, the mathematical relationship between the ultimate support force and the depth of the support point of the WSC robot was constructed. Additionally, the drilling scheme of the WSC robot at different depths was also determined. The constraint model of the impact module was established, and the structural parameters were optimized through non-linear programming to achieve the maximum impact energy. Simulations of the impact process were then carried out in explicit dynamics. The simulation results show that the optimized impact module can effectively drill through the lunar rocks. This result validates, to some extent, the drilling capability of the WSC robot in lunar rocks. The research work can provide technical reference and theoretical support for deep coring lunar rocks.