基于SLM的模拟月壤原位成形技术

激光选区熔化（SLM）技术与原位资源利用（ISRU）概念结合,有望解决地外大规模基地建设的工程难题。利用模拟月壤考察了SLM成形技术用于月球原位资源增材制造的可行性。采用高能束激光为热源,对粉床内模拟月壤颗粒进行逐层照射,使颗粒熔融固结。以激光体积能量密度为综合评价指标,开展SLM工艺参数研究,实现模拟月壤的低能耗、高效率、高几何精度成形。研究结果表明:模拟月壤在激光工作波长吸收率高,热稳定性好,利用较低激光能量可实现模拟月壤SLM成形,成形件几何精度高;激光体积能量密度决定了成形件质量,增加激光体积能量密度可以提高成形件力学性能,但过高的激光体积能量密度使成形件发生严重变形;模拟月壤颗粒形态复杂、粒度分布广、流动性差,通过优化颗粒粒径分布范围,可以有效提高粉体的流动性,从而形成致密且均匀的粉床,避免成形件缺陷的产生。      

基于球堆叠的月壤蓄热器传热特性数值研究

月壤蓄热是月球原位资源利用的一种重要方式，也是解决未来月球基地能源需求的最具潜力的途径之一。针对月壤蓄热过程，建立了基于球形堆叠的月壤蓄热器多孔介质蓄热模型。蓄热器的壳体采用登月舱下降级的燃料罐，流体传热介质采用氦气。通过数值模拟的方法研究了不同流动压降下月壤蓄热球堆叠方式、球直径对蓄热器传热过程的影响规律和机理，并分析了蓄热动态过程。研究结果表明，月壤蓄热球在简单立方体均匀堆叠（SC）和面中心立方体均匀堆叠(FCC)两种方式下，SC堆叠方式的综合蓄热指数比FCC模式可提高302%；同时还发现月壤蓄热球的直径存在最优值，可使得蓄热器在单位泵功下获得最大的蓄热量，并且该最佳值随着流体进出口压差增加而减小。该研究可为未来月壤蓄热器的设计和优化提供理论指导。     

月面钻进真空环境模拟装置的设计与验证

探月工程（三期）项目提出了在月面进行至少2 m深度的钻取采样任务,前期需要在地面进行模拟月面钻进过程热特性的研究,为此本文发明了一套月面真空环境模拟装置。根据模拟月壤钻进试验的要求,设计了一种可从底部抽气的三段式可多次拆装的真空罐结构。考虑到模拟月壤的颗粒大小和快速抽真空的要求,设计了一种筛网状具有多层过滤结构的月壤筒。根据在真空度不变的条件下可进行连续多次钻进试验的要求,设计了可从外部操作的具有缺齿结构的月壤筒转动机构。由真空度要求和可耐粉尘的特性要求,选取了三级扩散泵组。实验表明,在不放置模拟月壤的情况下,本环境模拟装置中的真空度可达10-1 Pa,在放置模拟月壤的情况下,真空度可达7 Pa,能够满足模拟月面钻进过程热特性试验的要求。此外,通过测量抽真空过程中真空度随时间的变化情况还得出了模拟月壤出气量曲线,对模拟月壤真空系统的实验应用具有重要价值。      

基于相似理论的月球车月面牵引性能预测

引入相似理论对月球车的轮土交互系统进行研究,建立了月壤-车轮交互系统的地面力学相似模型,针对原位月壤内聚力较小的特点,提出了一种无需改变车轮尺寸、以模拟月壤为土壤介质的模型试验方法,对月面重力环境下月球车轮的牵引性能进行预测.利用室内土槽试验和颗粒流仿真相结合的方法对该模型试验方法的有效性进行验证,验证结果与模型试验的理论分析结果较为接近,表明该法具有较好的可行性和有效性,可考虑用于预测月球车的月面牵引性能.     

模拟月壤可行驶性的离散元数值分析

基于模拟月壤扫描电镜显微照片,建立土颗粒的几何模型,提出不规则形状颗粒群系统的生成策略,构建模拟月壤颗粒间接触的简化本构模型,并利用量纲分析法和双轴压缩试验离散元模拟,建立土宏观力学特性与细观模型参数的关系,结合模拟月壤的三轴压缩试验数据确定离散元模型参数.在月球重力环境下,对轮-土交互作用进行离散元模拟,推导土壤推力的细观表达式,定性分析不同滑转率时土颗粒的动态行为,定量分析模拟月壤的可行驶性.研究结果表明,土壤推力随滑转率的提高而增大;当车轮以高滑转率行驶时,土壤推力相对行驶时间存在瞬态和稳态2个阶段,并且瞬态值高于稳态值.     

模拟月壤真空试验装置设计及实现方法

我国探月三期需在月面真空环境下钻采2 m深的月壤样品,为测试采样器在真空热环境下的性能,需首先在地面模拟一个接近月表的真空热环境.本文设计了一套模拟月壤真空试验装置,研究了模拟月壤真空实现方法.通过使用机械泵对模拟月壤进行抽真空,分析了抽速、样品量、含水量、密实度和温度等因素对模拟月壤真空度的影响情况.此外,分别分析了从容器顶部、底部抽气对模拟月壤抽真空效果的影响,提出了保证样品密实度的可行抽气方法.该试验研究对构建月面真空环境模拟器具备一定的参考价值.      

模拟月面环境钻进过程热特性研究

根据实际月面采样任务需求,月壤钻取采样器须在真空条件下,实现无辅助冷却介质的连续钻进取心工作,这极易导致钻头温度快速升高,影响采样任务的可靠进行。因此,为深入研究钻进过程的热特性,通过分析钻头切削具与孔底月壤的切削和摩擦机理,建立钻头在钻进过程中的温升模型,归纳影响钻头温升的主要因素。根据月面真空条件下的月壤环境,制备真空度低于10 Pa、钻进深度不少于2 m的模拟月壤,并开展钻进过程热特性试验。试验结果表明钻头前端切削具的温升与钻压力存在很强的正相关性,与钻头扭矩相关性较弱。基于试验结果对温升模型中的相关性系数进行修正,拟合出钻头温升曲线,并与试验实测结果进行对比,实现了钻进过程热特性的定性分析。     

考虑相互碰撞影响的月壤颗粒运动轨迹计算方法研究

针对登月着陆器下降过程扬起月壤颗粒的运动轨迹及空间分布问题, 提出了考虑月壤颗粒发生完全弹性碰撞和非完全弹性碰撞两种情况的月壤颗粒运动轨迹计算方法. 根据质量守恒和能量守恒定律确定月壤颗粒相互碰撞后的速度, 通过羽流场与月壤颗粒的流固耦合相互迭代计算方法, 获得被扬起的月壤颗粒在羽流场和相互碰撞共同作用下随时间的运动轨迹和空间分布. 基于美国Apollo 11登月过程实测数据, 采用数值模拟对该方法进行验证. 结果表明, 考虑月壤颗粒相互碰撞的影响后, 其运动规律出现较明显的扩散趋势. 进一步考虑月壤颗粒相互碰撞引起能量损失的影响后, 月壤颗粒的扩散趋势有所减弱, 并且扬起的高度随着恢复系数的减小而降低.      

无轴螺旋式模拟月壤主动填充装置研制

针对月面综合钻进试验台模拟月壤利用率和试验效率低的问题,提出一种主动送土试验台的设计方案,满足月面钻采作业机具的取芯特性专项验证需求。该方案利用无轴螺旋作为模拟月壤传送的核心部件,采用集成料斗实现难流动物料连续送料的功能,通过无轴螺旋转动主动将模拟月壤垂直送入取芯机构,代替综合钻进试验台钻取月壤的作用,可以实现多种级配模拟月壤的定量和定压输送。为了验证设计参数的正确性,利用EDEM离散元分析模拟月壤输送特性,并开展了试验验证。结果表明：以无轴螺旋作为主动送土机构的核心单元,可实现主动送土试验台自主、高效率地进行模拟月壤输送模拟多种取芯工况,为工程部门钻采作业机具研制定型提供性能参数验证的依据。     

Production of high fidelity lunar agglutinate simulant

As space faring nations consider manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, there is a growing need to develop high fidelity lunar regolith simulants that can accurately reproduce the properties and behavior of lunar regolith. Such simulants will be employed to verify the performance of equipment, mechanisms, structures and processes to be used on the lunar surface. One of the significant limitations of current terrestrial-based simulants, such as the popular mare simulant, JSC-1A, is the lack of agglutinates. This paper investigates the production of a lunar mare agglutinate simulant based on JSC-1A. A modified plasma processing technique was used to expose the JSC-1A regolith simulant to high temperatures and transform it to predominantly a glassy phase. Detailed characterization results are presented to confirm that the agglutinate simulant material produced during this investigation reasonably satisfies the primary requirements of an agglutinate simulant such as amorphous/crystalline content, particle size, morphology, vesicular structure, chemistry, and presence of nanophase elemental Fe.     

Mechanical behavior of the metal parts welded with extraterrestrial regolith simulant by the solar concentrator in ISRU & ISRF application

The use of in-situ resources plays an important role on future extraterrestrial human activities for the facility repair and habitat construction, especially in sustainable space exploration of Moon and Mars. A method of the metal welded with extraterrestrial regolith simulant using solar processing under ambient conditions is presented. Metal parts are made of Q235B ferroalloy and TA2 titanium alloy into standard tensile members according to the ASTM code. They are disconnected from the middle in advance, and then welded together with lunar and Martian regolith simulant under ambient conditions, respectively. The entire welding process and precautions are detailed. Additionally, the mechanical behavior of weldments is characterized regarding their tensile strength. Furthermore, the fusion zone of weldments is studied by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. The results show that it is possible to weld metal parts together with extraterrestrial regolith simulant by the solar concentrator. The average ultimate tensile strength of ferroalloy specimens welded with lunar and Martian regolith simulant is 2.94 MPa and 1.66 MPa; The average ultimate tensile strength of titanium alloy specimens welded with lunar and Martian regolith simulant is 4.95 MPa and 2.59 MPa. Moreover, the failure mode of all weldments was brittle failure. The welding joints strength derives from the phases that the regolith as the solder fusing into ferroalloys in a homogeneous way and titanium alloys in an inhomogeneous way. The presented method may provide a new thought for astronaut assistance associating with repairing and fabricating in subsequent Moon and Mars missions.     

A drilling tool design and in situ identification of planetary regolith mechanical parameters

The physical and mechanical properties as well as the heat flux of regolith are critical evidence in the study of planetary origin and evolution. Moreover, the mechanical properties of planetary regolith have great value for guiding future human planetary activities. For planetary subsurface exploration, an inchworm boring robot (IBR) has been proposed to penetrate the regolith, and the mechanical properties of the regolith are expected to be simultaneously investigated during the penetration process using the drilling tool on the IBR. This paper provides a preliminary study of an in situ method for measuring planetary regolith mechanical parameters using a drilling tool on a test bed. A conical-screw drilling tool was designed, and its drilling load characteristics were experimentally analyzed. Based on the drilling tool-regolith interaction model, two identification methods for determining the planetary regolith bearing and shearing parameters are proposed. The bearing and shearing parameters of lunar regolith simulant were successfully determined according to the pressure-sinkage tests and shear tests conducted on the test bed. The effects of the operating parameters on the identification results were also analyzed. The results indicate a feasible scheme for future planetary subsurface exploration.     

CAS-1 lunar soil simulant

Lunar soil simulant is a geochemical reproduction of lunar regolith, and is needed for lunar science and engineering researches. This paper describes a new lunar soil simulant, CAS-1, prepared by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to support lunar orbiter, soft-landing mission and sample return missions of China’s Lunar Exploration Program, which is scheduled for 2004–2020. Such simulants should match the samples returned from the Moon, all collected from the lunar regolith rather than outcrops. The average mineral and chemical composition of lunar soil sample returned from the Apollo 14 mission, which landed on the Fra Mauro Formation, is chosen as the model for the CAS-1 simulant. Source material for this simulant was a low-Ti basaltic scoria dated at 1600 years from the late Quaternary volcanic area in the Changbai Mountains of northeast China. The main minerals of this rock are pyroxene, olivine, and minor plagioclase, and about 20–40% modal glass. The scoria was analyzed by XRF and found to be chemically similar to Apollo 14 lunar sample 14163. It was crushed in an impact mill with a resulting median particle size 85.9 μm, similar to Apollo soils. Bulk density, shear resistance, complex permittivity, and reflectance spectra were also similar to Apollo 14 soil. We conclude that CAS-1 is an ideal lunar soil simulant for science and engineering research of future lunar exploration program.     

Upwards migration phenomenon on molten lunar regolith: New challenges and prospects for ISRU

As part of our research on the feasibility of producing commodities from lunar regolith by thermal-driven processes with minimal terrestrial precursors we need to characterize, reproduce, and understand thermophysical properties of the molten regolith still unforeseen under the lunar vacuum conditions at a scalable sample size. Two unanticipated phenomena, apparently caused by lunar melt’s surface tension under vacuum, have been revealed in our research work, vacuum void formation and upwards migration. In this paper we present our findings and thinkable explanation on the upwards migration phenomenon experimentally observed and consistently replicated as JSC-1A lunar regolith simulant melted at high vacuum. Upwards migration of molten lunar regolith will make future lunar ISRU’s melting processes both challenging as molten bulk material would migrate upwards along the container’s walls, and also promising on new opportunities for alternative ISRU’s sustainable processes as regolith’s upwards migration takes place in uniformed thin-film pattern. Among the potential ISRU’s processes that might use controlled thermal thin-film-based migration without the necessity of terrestrial precursors are production of feedstock for 3D printing, fractional separation of regolith’s component’s (O₂, metals, and alloys) via pyrolysis, film coating, purification of valuables solid crystals including silicon, and fabrication of key elements for microfluidic, and MEMS devices. Thermal upwards migration phenomenon on JSC-1A’s melt is formulated and explained by the authors as due to thermal Marangoni effect (also known as thermo-capillarity) in which temperature gradients within the melt’s bulk and along the crucible’s wall yield the surface tension large enough to supersede the gravitational force and yield the experimentally observed upwards thin-film migration. As far as the authors know, upwards thermal migration of molten JSC-1A (or other lunar simulant regolith) under vacuum has not been reported in the literature. A thermal mathematical model accounting for thermal Marangoni effect on molten JSC-1A agrees with what experimentally was observed, the formation of the meniscus on the melt-wall surface interface along with an incipient upwards migration in thin-film pattern along the crucible wall that, according to the model, experiences large temperature gradient, an important factor to trigger the thermal Marangoni effect along with the fact that surface tension of the molten lunar regolith material is temperature dependent.     

Investigating the soil removal characteristics of flexible tube coring method for lunar exploration

Compared with other technical solutions, sampling the planetary soil and returning it back to Earth may be the most direct method to seek the evidence of extraterrestrial life. To keep sample’s stratification for further analyzing, a novel sampling method called flexible tube coring has been adopted for China future lunar explorations. Given the uncertain physical properties of lunar regolith, proper drilling parameters should be adjusted immediately in piercing process. Otherwise, only a small amount of core could be sampled and overload drilling faults could occur correspondingly. Due to the fact that the removed soil is inevitably connected with the cored soil, soil removal characteristics may have a great influence on both drilling loads and coring results. To comprehend the soil removal characteristics, a non-contact measurement was proposed and verified to acquire the coring and removal results accurately. Herein, further more experiments in one homogenous lunar regolith simulant were conducted, revealing that there exists a sudden core failure during the sampling process and the final coring results are determined by the penetration per revolution index. Due to the core failure, both drilling loads and soil’s removal states are also affected thereby.     

深空探测车可变直径车轮牵引通过性分析

提出了一种可变直径轮深空探测车,其具有结构紧凑、越障能力强、重心低、运行平稳等优点.考虑了月球重力环境和月壤的力学特性,应用基于贝克模型的地面力学理论,分析了深空探测车可变直径车轮与月壤间的相互作用,对轮片展开和车轮下陷做了合理的简化,对不同滑转条件下探测车轮的挂钩牵引力、驱动力矩和驱动效率进行了计算,结果表明车轮的展开减小了推土阻力,车轮的挂钩牵引力和驱动效率都比车轮收缩状态有了明显的提高,并获得了使驱动效率达到最大值的滑转率的范围.      

三层月壤模型的多通道微波辐射模拟与月壤厚度的反演

由月球表面数字高程试验性地构造了整个月球表面月壤厚度的分布.根据Clementine探月卫星的紫外-可见光光学数据,计算了整个月球表面月壤中FeO+TiO2含量分布,给出了整个月球表面月壤介电常数分布.由月球表层温度的观测结果以及月壤的导热特性,给出了月尘层与月壤层温度随纬度分布的经验公式.在这些条件的基础上,建立了月尘、月壤、月岩三层微波热辐射模型.由起伏逸散定理,模拟计算了该月球模型多通道辐射亮度温度.然后,以此辐射亮度温度模拟加随机噪声为理论观测值,按三层模型提出了月壤层厚度反演方法.由于高频通道穿透深度小,由高频通道的辐射亮度温度按照两层月尘-月壤微波热辐射模型反演月尘层与月壤层的物理温度,再由穿透深度较大的低频通道辐射亮度温度反演月壤层厚度.对于反演的相对误差也进行了讨论.