A New Method for Experimental Investigation of Microstructure Morphology of Lunar Soil Simulant

Abstract:

In practice, the advanced test equipment for soil microstructure morphology are very expensive and complicated to operate. Conventional studies on microstructure morphology generally focus on sands with one single fraction. A new test method, which can derive the microstructure parameters (e.g. aspect ratio, roughness) of TJ 1 lunar soil simulant consisting of various fractions, was introduced in this paper. First, high definition images of particles in different fractions were obtained by using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Then the microstructure parameters of each fraction were obtained by using the AutoCAD and Matlab software. Finally, the weight of morphological parameters of each fraction were gained using the distinct element method analyses, and the corresponding representative parameters of the whole specimen were calculated by using the weighted average method.