Vertical Transportation of Lunar Regolith and Ice Particles Using Vibrating Tube
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 34, Issue 6
Abstract
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is planning to operate an uncrewed rover on the Moon to search for water ice, which exists at the polar regions of the Moon. The rover’s 1.5-m-long drill will penetrate the regolith layer of the lunar surface and capture ice particles mixed with the regolith. A transportation system for crushed ice particles mixed with the lunar regolith has been developed utilizing a vibration transportation mechanism that realizes the lifting of particles to physical and chemical analyzers installed on the rover. In this mechanism, the friction force between the inner wall of the tube and particles mainly plays the role of conveying particles upward while the tube inserted vertically into the bulk of the regolith is oscillating up and down. A parametric experiment was conducted to deduce the optimal configuration and operational conditions, and it was achieved that simulant particles and crushed ice particles mixed with lunar regolith are transported through the long tube. In addition, it was predicted by numerical calculations based on the discrete element method that the transportation performance in the lunar environment is better than that on Earth owing to low gravitational acceleration on the Moon.
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Data Availability Statement
Some data and models used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request: data in Figs. 4–13.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge Kazuhiro Hata (Waseda University) for his assistance in carrying out the experiment as well as Matthias Sperl (DLR) for his support of setting up the numerical calculations. This research was supported, in part, by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Nos. 17K06276 and 20K04927, and Masato Adachi is supported by JSPS Overseas Research Fellowships and Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship.
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Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 34 • Issue 6 • November 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 25, 2020
Accepted: Jul 6, 2021
Published online: Aug 25, 2021
Published in print: Nov 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jan 25, 2022
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