Playing with DIRT: Building the Framework for a Comprehensive Materials Database
Publication: Earth and Space 2022
ABSTRACT
Long-term, sustainable planetary exploration will require the ability to “live off the land,” relying on in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and in situ construction as core capabilities. Reduction of both risk and launch mass for lunar construction will require evaluating and comparing regolith materials for use as feedstocks suitable for in situ beneficiation and fabrication of building components. These material assessment capabilities will inform lunar infrastructure design decisions, with co-benefits for terrestrial construction using in situ materials. Current planetary construction technology development relies on lunar mapping and orbital data, Apollo-era sample analyses, current simulant inventories, and tests conducted using analog site soils. Requirements for lunar infrastructure design decisions and construction systems will be determined based on specific environmental conditions, mission architecture, and the materials available within traverse range of lunar feedstock processing depots. Critical for success is the capability to identify, evaluate, and make effective use of a wide range of materials as they are found in situ on the lunar surface. This paper discusses the development of a digital repository for data on soil and regolith properties, beginning with their structural performance in both cementitious and non-cementitious building material formulations. The database for in situ resource testing (DIRT) compiles a catalog of raw materials, additives, and formulations, with notations pertaining to material sources and preparation techniques entered via a web-based user interface. Design of consistent data schemas for site-sourced materials evaluation will facilitate linkage with relevant terrestrial and planetary materials databases, while enabling guided data input via templates for participation by broader groups of collaborators. Results of these analyses are compiled in a centralized repository to generate insights applicable for regolith resources and landing sites yet to be precisely defined. Collection of thorough records of material characteristics, applications, and performance will support innovative construction solutions not only for space infrastructure but for sustainable, resilient design in the terrestrial built environment.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Alkhateb, H. et al. (2021). “Optimizing Magnesium Phosphate Binders with Boric Acid for Additive Construction Applications.” ASCE Earth & Space Conference, 2021.
Almashaqbeh, H.K. (2019). “Decoding and Optimizing Magnesium Phosphate Binders for Additive Construction Applications.” University of Mississippi, Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 1537.
ASTM. (2021). “Building Standards” Retrieved from https://www.astm.org/Standards/building-standards.html on December 31, 2021.
ASTM. (2021). ASTM C109 - Standard Test Method for Compressive Strength of Hydraulic Cement Mortars (Using 2-in. or (50-mm) Cube Specimens).
ASTM. (2021). ASTM C136 - Standard Test Method for Sieve Analysis of Fine and Coarse Aggregates. West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: ASTM International.
ASTM. (2021). ASTM C144 - Standard Specification for Aggregate for Masonry Mortar. West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: ASTM International.
ASTM. (2021). ASTM C230 - Standard Specification for Flow Table for Use in Tests of Hydraulic Cement.
ASTM. (2021). ASTM C1437 - Standard Test Method for Flow of Hydraulic Cement Mortar. West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: ASTM International.
Chi, W.K. (1991). “NCSU Concrete Materials Database.” NRC Strategic Highway Research Program. https://trid.trb.org/view/350765 Accessed March 29, 2022.
Choi, et al., (2021). “A Multipurpose Cassegrain System.” ASCE Earth & Space Conference, 2021.
Colaprete, A. (2020). “VIPER: A Lunar Water Reconnaissance Mission.” Retrieved from https://science.nasa.gov/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/09-Colaprete-VIPER%20Overview%20for%20PAC%2008172020.pdf
Denevi, B. et al. (2020). “Lunar Simulant Assessment.” Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Deutsches Institut Fur Normung E.V. (2018). “DIN 18947 - Earth plasters – Requirements, test and labelling.”.
DigitalFire Corporation. (2021). “INSIGHT Glaze Software”, Retrieved from http//digitalfire.com on March 30, 2022.
Edmunson, J. (2018). “Lunar Simulants.” Lunar Simulants (No. MSFC-E-DAA-TN47555).
EN 1015-11:1999; Methods of Test for Mortar for Masonry—Part 11: Determination of Flexural and Compressive Strength of Hardened Mortar. BSI.
Glass, B. et al. (2018). “Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies Project: second year.” Earth and Space 2018: Engineering for Extreme Environments.
Hall, M. (2021). Glazy tweaks global recipe collection. The Journal of Australian Ceramics, 60(3), 108–109.
Hare, T. M., Gaddis, L. R., Hartke, M., Sunda, A., Mayer, D. P., & Balien, M. (2019, June). The Annex of the PDS Cartography and Imaging Sciences Node: A 2019 Update. In 4th Planetary Data Workshop (Vol. 2151, p. 7054).
Hunter, M. A. and Rumpf, M. E. (2021). Terrestrial Analogs Data Portal: Leveraging the ScienceBase Item Model for Data Discovery. LPI Contributions, 2595, 8019.
Kleinhenz, J. et al. (2019). “In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Living off the Land on the Moon and Mars.” ACS National Meeting and Exposition, 2019.
Kleinhenz, J. et al. (2021). “Lunar In-Situ Resource Utilization: Concept to Reality.” ASCE Earth & Space Conference, 2021.
Kokaly, R.F. et al. (2017). USGS Spectral Library Version 7: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 1035, 61 p.,.
Moradi, H., et al. (2022). Glaze Epochs: Understanding Lifelong Material Relationships within Ceramics Studios. Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 1–13).
Moses, R. et al. (2021). “Requirements Development Framework for Lunar In-Situ Surface Construction of Infrastructure.” ASCE Earth & Space Conference, 2021.
Mueller, R. et al. (2019). “NASA Centennial Challenge: 3D Printed Habitat, Phase 3 Final Results.” 70th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), October 21-25, 2019, Washington, DC.
Mueller, R. et al. (2020). “Lunar mega project: Processes, workflow and terminology of the terrestrial construction industry versus the space industry,” ASCE Earth & Space Conference, 2021.
Mueller, R. et al. (2021). “Construction with Regolith.” ASCE Earth & Space Conference 2021.
NASA (2020a). “The Artemis Plan.” https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/artemis_plan-20200921.pdf.
NASA (2020b). “VIPER: The Rover and Its Onboard Toolkit.” https://www.nasa.gov/viper/rover.
NASA (2021a). “Haughton-Mars Project.” https://www.nasa.gov/analogs/hmp.
NASA (2021b). “The Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1).” https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/polar-resources-ice-mining-experiment-1-prime-1.
Oland, C. and Ferraris, C. (2000), Concrete Materials Database, Concrete International. Retrieved from https://www.nist.gov/publications/concrete-materials-database March 30, 2022.
Planetary Data System (2021). “Planetary Data System Standards Reference.” https://pds.nasa.gov/datastandards/documents/concepts/Concepts_1.16.0.pdf.
Planetary Simulant Database (2021). “BP-1: Black Point.” https://simulantdb.com/simulants/bp1.php.
Planetary Simulant Database (2021). “Loose guidelines for simulant fidelity.” https://simulantdb.com/SimulantFidelity.pdf.
Romanosoglou, C., et al. (2010). Glaze calculation software based on the Seger method with recipe mixing utilities, limit formulas and toxicity measurements. Recent Advances in Software Engineering, Parallel and Distributed Systems, 45–49.
Sawhill, H. (2019). UMF phase diagrams: Guidemaps for ceramic glaze development. Ceramics Art and Perception, (113), 130–135.
Seitz, S. (2019). “Building Materials for the Moon & Mars: Mortar Testing Methods for Regolith.” ASCE EMI – MS99, Pasadena, CA.
Smith III, F. G., and Flach, G. P. (2015). Development and Demonstration of Material Properties Database and Software for the Simulation of Flow Properties in Cementitious Materials. USDOE Office of Environmental Management. doi:.
Sugiyama, T. (2013). Construction of the Ceramic Color Database—Database of more than 300,000 glaze test pieces and its application to industrial research—Synthesiology English edition, 6(2), 84–93.
Sugiyama, T. (2014). Construction of a Glaze Database. Key Engineering Materials, 608, 37–40.
Teorey, T. et al. (2011). Database Modeling and Design (Fifth Edition), p 109–130.
Total Materia (2021). https://www.totalmateria.com Accessed December 31, 2021.
UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository (2021). “Compressive Concrete Strength.” https://archive-beta.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/concrete+compressive+strength.
Werkheiser, N. et al. (2015). “Development of Additive Construction Technologies for Application to Development of Lunar/Martian Surface Structures Using In-Situ Materials.” CAMX Conference Proceedings, Dallas, TX, 2015.
Wickham, H. (2014). “Tidy Data.” Journal of Statistical Software, 59(10).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published online: Jan 5, 2023
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.