Laser remelting of regolith in vacuum: Reducing porosity for enhanced lunar resource utilization
13th CIRP Conference on Photonic Technologies (LANE)
18. September
Fürth
2024
Type: Konferenzbeitrag
Abstract
The use of lunar regolith, the powdery soil found on the Moon, is crucial for utilizing the Moon as a stepping stone for future space exploration. Laser beam melting of regolith on the lunar surface is a promising technique for constructing infrastructure on the Moon. When regolith simulants are melted using a laser beam under Earth’s atmosphere, the resulting samples are dense with a porosity below 5\%. However, melting it under vacuum results in porosities of up to 75\%. In order to enhance the mechanical strength and dimensional accuracy of the samples, it is necessary to develop an approach to reduce the porosities.
Therefore, in this work, two-dimensionally manufactured samples, approximately 25 mm x 25 mm in size, made of solidified regolith simulant were remelted with a laser beam (wavelength: 940 nm and 980 nm) using laser powers of 100-150 W and a scanning speed of 1 mm/s under a vacuum of approximately 3 ∙ 10-3 mbar. The study found that remelting reduces the porosity of two-dimensional samples to 19\% and that the laser power applied primarily influences the size of the remelted area. It was also observed that remelting resulted in thinner samples that exhibited partial translucency. The surface roughness was reduced by 77\%, and the surface appeared smoother. The hardness of the samples remained unchanged.