Evaluation of Required Strength for Lunar Base Construction Materials and Development of Regolith Solidification via Vibrational Compaction
- Paper number
IAC-24,A3,IP,190,x81530
- Author
Dr. Tatsuya Nukushina, National Institute of Technology (Japan), Japan
- Year
2024
- Abstract
The active pursuit of sustainable lunar exploration as a foundation for humanity's expansion into space is gaining momentum. Constructing a lunar base is necessary for future stays and development on the moon, and it's crucial to develop effective construction material technologies. Producing common Earth construction materials like concrete and metal on the moon, or importing them from Earth, would be prohibitively expensive at the early stages of lunar base development. Thus, the focus has shifted to utilizing lunar regolith as a construction material. The first step towards using regolith as a building material would be the manufacturing of building blocks from regolith. On Earth, creating blocks from sand usually requires a large amount of water. However, on the moon, water is a scarce resource, reserved primarily for rocket fuel for missions to Mars and life support for humans, making its use for construction materials impractical. This paper presents a technique to mold blocks from regolith in the simplest way possible, without using water. An initial study on the required strength for construction materials indicated that, due to the moon's low gravity, and considering that early lunar bases will likely be no more than four stories high with simple structures, the necessary compressive strength would be about 1N/mm^2, and bending strength around 12N/mm^2. Considering the powdery nature of regolith, a compression molding approach, similar to techniques used in pharmaceutical powder compaction, was applied. For the experiments, crushed basaltic sand from Japan, which closely simulates the chemical composition of lunar regolith, was used. Although the regolith simulant solidified under compression in a metal mold without water, it crumbled when removed from the mold. However, success was achieved in manufacturing construction materials of a size comparable to brick blocks, with a compressive strength exceeding 2N/mm^2.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-24,A3,IP,190,x81530.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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