Abstract
Martian habitats are ideally constructed using only locally available soils; extant attempts to process structural materials on Mars, however, generally require additives or calcination. In this work we demonstrate that Martian soil simulant Mars-1a can be directly compressed at ambient into a strong solid without additives, highlighting a possible aspect of complete Martian in-situ resource utilization. Flexural strength of the compact is not only determined by the compaction pressure but also significantly influenced by the lateral boundary condition of processing loading. The compression loading can be applied either quasi-statically or through impact. Nanoparticulate iron oxide (npOx), commonly detected in Martian regolith, is identified as the bonding agent. Gas permeability of compacted samples was measured to be on the order of 10−16 m2, close to that of solid rocks. The compaction procedure is adaptive to additive manufacturing.
Highlights
Much of Martian regolith is formed by basaltic fines containing iron[3, 4]
As D is 25–45 μm, most of the particles are smaller than 10 μm after compaction, as shown in Fig. 2(A) and Fig. S16 in Supplementary Material
The properties of compacted solid are unrelated to the initial particle size distribution
Summary
Much of Martian regolith is formed by basaltic fines containing iron[3, 4]. The soil consists of substantial nanoparticulate iron oxides and oxyhydroxides, collectively known as npOx, responsible for its reddish hue[3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Upon a high-pressure compression, Mars-1a particles form a strong solid at ambient, with resultant flexural strengths exceeding that of typical steel-reinforced concrete or many in situ resource utilization (ISRU) created materials formed by adding binders[25, 26]. Mars-1a is one of a multitude of inorganic species known to form intact solids under compression[20, 27], its heterogeneity distinguishes npOx as a cement acting under instantaneous mechanical pressure apart from natural, long-term processes, such as fluvial concretion[18, 28] This advance offers confidence that the self-cohesive soils seen on Mars may, be further compressed directly into high-strength structural parts. All boundaries were of cylindrical geometry, with the resulting compacts typically disc-shaped
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