A rover is a planetary surface exploration device designed to move across the ground on a planet or a planetary-like body. Exploration rovers are increasingly becoming a vital part of the search for scientific evidence and discoveries on a planetary satellite of the Sun, such as the Moon or Mars. Reliable behavior and predictable locomotion of a rover is important. Understanding soil behavior and its interaction with rover wheels—the terramechanics—is of great importance in rover exploration performance. Up to now, many researchers have adopted Bekker’s semiempirical model to predict rover wheelsoil interaction, which is based on the assumption that soil is deformable when a pressure is applied to it. Despite this basic assumption of the model, the pressure-sinkage relation is not fully understood, and it continues to present challenges for rover designers. This article presents a new pressure-sinkage model based on dimensional analysis (DA) and results of bevameter tests. DA was applied to the test results in order to propose a new pressure-sinkage model by reducing physical quantitative parameters. As part of the work, a new bevameter was designed and built so that it could be successfully used to obtain a proper pressure-sinkage relation of Korean Lunar Soil Simulant (KLS-1). The new pressure-sinkage model was constructed by using three different sizes of flat plate diameters of the bevameter. The newly proposed model was compared successfully with other models for validation purposes.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. BEVAMETER TEST AND PRESSURE-SINKAGEMODEL
    2.1 Review of Bevameter and Pressure-Sinkage Models
    2.2 Normal Bevameter Testing
    2.3 New Pressure (p)–Sinkage (z) Model for Rover Wheel-Lunar Soil Interaction based on Dimensional Analysis
3. PRESSURE-SINKAGE TEST AND DATA ANALYSIS
    3.1 Pressure-Sinkage Test
    3.2 Dimensional Analysis (DA) and Pressure-SinkageModel Construction
    3.3 Parameter Determination and Sinkage Predictions
4. ANALYSIS OF THE TEST RESULTS
5. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REFERENCES

• Yujin Lim(Department of Civil, Railroad and Unmanned Systems Engineering, Pai Chai University) Corresponding author
• Viet Dinh Le(Department of Civil, Railroad and Unmanned Systems Engineering, Pai Chai University)
• Pierre Anthyme Bahati(Department of Civil, Railroad and Unmanned Systems Engineering, Pai Chai University, Rwanda Polytechnic - Integrated Polytechnic Regional College)