Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Open Access Master's Report

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Advisor 1

Paulus van Susante

Committee Member 1

Stephen Morse

Committee Member 2

Madelyn MacRobbie

Committee Member 3

Ian Jehn

Abstract

Humanity seeks to return to the surface of the Moon with the advent of the Artemis missions. These endeavors plan to be the beginning of a new era as NASA and other space organizations seek to establish a lunar base. Ahead of any astronauts or mining infrastructure, the physical groundwork will need to be laid to support the arrival of rockets, boots, and rover wheels. As surfaces are prepared, they will need to be tested and verified to ensure the stability of any structures placed on top. Understanding the bearing capacity is vital to soil quality testing. A standard terrestrial test for bearing capacity is loaded plate testing, using the procedure and test equipment outlined in ASTM D1195: Standard Test Method for Repetitive Static Plate Tests of Soils and Flexible Pavement Components for Use in Evaluation and Design of Airport and Highway Pavements. While loaded plate testing has been attempted in lunar regolith samples and on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo missions, it has never been tested at the scale outlined in the standard test method. This led researchers at Michigan Technological University’s Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab to develop a high-force load frame capable of handling the forces required for the larger scale system. The tests used a high-force linear actuator, load cell, and linear transducers to generate load settlement curves created by testing 1.8 g/cc, 1.6 g/cc, and 1.4 g/cc regolith sample bins using MTU-LHT-1A, an in-house lunar highlands simulant. These samples were tested with 3 replicates each in both atmospheric and vacuum conditions, a total of 18 tests. In addition to the load settlement curves, a pressure sensitive mat was buried in the regolith for medium and high-density atmospheric samples to assess the accuracy of the Boussinesq subsurface pressure distribution model. LiDAR surface scans were taken before and after one atmospheric test of each bulk density to investigate the possibility of characteristic volume change often noted with loaded plate testing.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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