Concordia University
Reduced gravity flights to study Discrete Element Method for Lunar rovers — The scientific research objective of this project is the study and the prediction of Lunar rover mobility, which occurs on mildly cohesive granular materials in reduced gravity, through Discrete Element Method (DEM) modeling of spherical and non-spherical particles from first principles. The research objectives of this project are to a) develop a set of granular materials, from spherical glass beads and paired beads, that exhibit Lunar-relevant cohesion properties, b) characterize the effect of Lunar-g on wheel-soil interactions with these sphere-based granular materials, and model these effects directly using Discrete Element Method (DEM) and c) Investigate the suitability of emulating reduced-g interactions by using reduced-density materials in 1-g, for spherical and non-spherical particles.