Thermal properties of lunar regolith simulant melting specimen

Abstract In this paper, investigations of two types of lunar regolith simulants, called TUBS-M and TUBS-T, developed by the Institute of Space Systems (IRAS) at TU Braunschweig are presented. These investigations are focused on the thermal properties, namely the specific heat capacity and the thermal conductivity. Several specimen of TUBS-M and TUBS-T were sintered at different temperatures with same holding times in order to investigate the influence of the sintering temperature on the thermal properties. The specific heat capacity was calculated resulting in an almost constant trend of both sintered simulants independent of the sintering temperature. To determine the thermal conductivity of the sintered simulants, the cooling behavior of the specimens was measured after heating them under vacuum conditions with a laser. This cooling behavior was simulated by a numerical model that solves the thermal conduction equation for the three-dimensional sample geometry. Both simulants show an increase of the thermal conductivity with increasing sintering temperature. After reaching a maximum at high sintering temperatures, the thermal conductivity starts to decrease.