Design Criteria for an Underground Lunar Mine
Underground excavation and construction techniques have been well developed terrestrially and provide an attractive option for lunar mining and habitat construction. The lunar mine, processing...
Vacuum Melting and Mechanical Testing of Simulated Lunar Glasses
Lunar silicate glasses may possess superior mechanical properties compared to terrestrial glasses because the anhydrous lunar environment should prevent hydrolytic weakening of the strong...
Strength and Fracture of Glass in the Lunar Environment
Due to the lack of water on the moon, the effects of hydrolytic depolymerization - stress corrosion cracking - will be nonexistent in glasses produced and used on the moon. This would...
Mechanical Properties of Compacted Lunar Simulant Using New Vacuum Triaxial Equipment
Mechanical stress-strain-strength properties of Arizona Lunar Simulant (ALS) are investigated by using a newly developed vacuum triaxial device that allows compaction under different initial...
Composite Materials for Structures on Planetary Surfaces
Development of structures for planetary surface environments depends upon the use of the most appropriate materials. Advanced composite materials are apparently the best candidates for...
Comparison of Micromechanical Models for Elastic Properties
The effective elastic properties for unidirectional composites, as predicted by several analytical micromechanical models are compared for glass/epoxy and graphite/epoxy. A brief review...
Regolith Dynamics
Due to the differences of the gravitational accelerations of the Earth and Lunar environments, geotechnical engineering must be applied differently in the two environments. This study...
Combustion Synthesis of Advanced Materials
The combustion synthesis of ceramic-metal composites using an in-situ liquid infiltration technique is described. The effect of varying the reactants and their stoichiometry to provide...
Principles of Control for Robotic Excavation
Excavation can be considered one of the most unstructured problems in the construction environment. On one hand, many technologies have been developed in the past to build shelters using...
Telerobotic Field Geologist: Preliminary Results of a Feasibility Study
We conducted three laboratory studies to explore the feasibility of developing a telerobot to perform planetary field geology. In all, 72 college students attempted to match each of 15...
The Lunar Transit Telescope (LTT): An Early Lunar-Based Science and Engineering Mission
The moon is an excellent spacecraft, with mass, rotational, thermal and orbital properties which make its utilization as a base for astronomical observations superbly reasonable. The Lunar...
Evacuation Modeling Near a Chemical Stockpile Site
Dynamic evacuation modeling was used as an aid in emergency response planning by Tooele County, Utah, location of the United States' largest stockpile of unitary chemical weapons, The...
A European Road Comes to the U.S.
From Sept. 7 to Sept. 22, a group of 21 federal and state transportation officials and industry representatives participated in the European Asphalt Study Tour, traveling the roads of...
Conflicts in Health and Safety Matters: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Constraints on time and resources influence the public sector as strongly as they influence our personal lives. Experience teaches us that our desires must be tempered by hard realities....
Variability Response Functions and Stochastic Field Discretization in Stochastic Finite Element Methods
Stochastic systems whose mechanical properties vary spatially are investigated in the present paper. The stochastic response variability of the systems is characterized by means of the...
Dynamic Response of Uncertain Two-Dimensional Structures
A concept for the reliability analysis of structures with uncertain elastic and mass properties is presented. Its applicability is shown by means of a numerical example. The results are...
Evaluation of Expansive Clay Soils in Tucson, Arizona
Research was conducted to investigate the mineralogy, engineering properties, and regional distribution of expansive clay soils in Tucson, Arizona. Data derived from X-ray diffraction...
Geotechnical Database Manipulation to Effect Stochastic Analysis
Existing or easily-developed databases of regional geotechnical information can be used to estimate prior probability distributions and parameters for use in stochastic analyses. Prior...
Site-Dependence of Spatial Coherency
The spatial coherency of ground motion from nine dense arrays are analyzed to examine the site-dependence of spatial coherency. The spatial coherencies computed for arrays located on alluvium...
Inspection Planning for Surface Fatigue Cracks
A reliability based method for planning of inspections to detect surface fatigue cracks is presented. Cracks are described as semi-elliptical surface cracks. The conditions governing fatigue...
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