Improvement of the Efficiency in Lunar Surface Excavation with Vibration

EasyChair Preprint no. 6673

Abstract

For these days, reusable rockets such as SpaceX have been attracting attention. The reusable rocket will lead to lower costs for launching rockets and the challenge to explore space will be increase. In the future of producing such social value, the moon is attracting attention as bases, and the establishment of excavation technology is indispensable for construction of bases and scientific exploration on the moon. However, the lunar surface condition makes it difficult to obtain excavation reaction force, which is an important element in excavation by the backhoe, because gravity on the moon is 1/6 of the earth and regolith, lunar sand, is compacted very hard. As a result, when we perform excavation work, it is assumed that the backhoe becomes unstable. We adopt a method to increase the weight of the backhoe to obtain excavation reaction force on earth, but in the case of moon development where the weight that can be transported is limited, it is technically and costly difficult. Therefore, an efficient excavation method of handling relatively small backhoe that can be transported to the moon is necessary. Normally, the percussion method and the air hammer method are examples of excavation methods that do not require much excavation reaction force. In this study, we focused on vibration excavation. It was considered that the internal friction angle, which indicates soil strength, was related to vibration from the basic formula for excavation proposed by Reece (1965). The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between vibration and internal friction angle as a basic research and to show the effectiveness of vibration excavation.

Keyphrases: Excavation reaction force, Inter friction angle, lunar surface, Vibration excavation

@Booklet{EasyChair:6673,
  author = {Takaaki Inada and Takaaki Yokoyama and Kazuyoshi Tateyama},
  title = {Improvement of the Efficiency in Lunar Surface Excavation with Vibration},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 6673},

  year = {EasyChair, 2021}}