Thermal conductivity of lunar regolith simulants with varying water-ice content
GUO Liang1, PAN Pengzhi1, 2, DONG Yi1, 2*
(1. State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering Safety, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei 430071, China; 2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China)
Abstract:To meet the demands for water ice detection and resource utilization in the lunar polar regions, this paper systematically investigates the thermal conductivity of simulated lunar regolith (IRSM-L1) under vacuum conditions. Utilizing the transient plane source method, the effects of dry density, vacuum pressure, temperature, and water ice saturation on thermal conductivity were analyzed. The results indicate that at vacuum pressures below 10?² Pa, dry density does not significantly influence thermal conductivity. Conversely, within the pressure range of 1 to 10? Pa, thermal conductivity markedly increases with rising pressure, primarily due to enhanced heat transfer through molecular collisions of gas. The temperatures impact on thermal conductivity is modulated by gas pressure: under extremely high vacuum conditions, thermal conductivity increases with temperature. However, at higher vacuum pressures, gas conduction becomes the dominant mechanism, with thermal conductivity primarily governed by pressure, increasing as vacuum pressure rises. By comparing samples prepared using the wet-mixing method and the ice-powder method, the critical role of water ice morphology on thermal conductivity was revealed. In the ice-powder method, ice particles are distributed in point contacts, resulting in a gradual linear increase in thermal conductivity with saturation, dominated by a series conduction mechanism. In contrast, the wet-mixing method exhibits a three-stage nonlinear growth pattern, characterized by a sharp rise in thermal conductivity within the 20% to 80% saturation range due to the formation of continuous ice-bridge networks, where the conduction mechanism aligns more closely with the geometric mean model. These findings provide important experimental evidence for analyzing the thermal properties of water ice-bearing lunar regolith in polar regions and for identifying the occurrence state of water ice.
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