Development of lunar regolith composite and structure via laser-assisted sintering

Abstract

Aiming at the exploration and resource utilization activities on the Moon, in situ resource utilization and in situ manufacturing are proposed to minimize the dependence on the ground transportation supplies. In this paper, a laser-assisted additive manufacturing process is developed to fabricate lunar regolith composites with PA12/SiO₂ mixing powders. The process parameters and composite material compositions are optimized in an appropriate range through orthogonal experiments to establish the relationship of process–structure–property for lunar regolith composites. The optimal combination of composite material compositions and process parameters are mixing ratio of 50/50 in volume, laser power of 30 W, scanning speed of 3500 mm/s, and scanning hatch space of 0.2 mm. The maximum tensile strength of lunar regolith composites reaches 9.248 MPa, and the maximum depth of surface variation is 120.79 μm, which indicates poor powder fusion and sintering quality. Thereafter, the mechanical properties of laser-sintered lunar regolith composites are implemented to the topology optimization design of complex structures. The effectiveness and the feasibility of this laser-assisted process are potentially developed for future lightweight design and manufacturing of the solar panel installed on the lunar rover.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

in situ manufacturing / laser-assisted powder fusion process / mechanical properties / topological structure design

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB1102800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Excellent Young Scholars (Grant No. 11722219), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51905439), and the Emerging (Interdisciplinary) Cultivation Project of Northwestern Polytechnical University, China (Grant Nos. 19SH030403 and 20SH030201).

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