Study on Mechanical Properties of QH-E Lunar Soil Simulant under Conventional Triaxial and Cyclic Triaxial Tests

Abstract

Study of the mechanical properties of lunar soil simulant is the key to conducting lunar soil sampling and lunar base construction. In this paper, conventional and cyclic triaxial tests are performed by using discrete element method (DEM) to study the mechanical properties of QH-E lunar soil simulant. The results indicate that the confining pressure has an important impact on the shear strength and dynamic modulus of QH-E lunar soil simulant. In the conventional triaxial test, with the increasing of the confining pressure, both the peak deviatoric stress and residual stress increase, and the relevant results have been supported by experiments. In cyclic triaxial test, the area of cyclic hysteresis loop decreases with the increasing of the number of cycles, the axial strain and dynamic modulus first increase and then tend to be stable with the increasing of the number of cycles. Moreover, the axial strain increases with increasing confining pressure, while dynamic modulus decreases at a specific cyclic stress ratio (CSR) condition.