Surface Lunar Soil Excavation Simulation Based on Three-Dimensional Discrete Element Method

One of the important objectives of lunar exploration is to obtain the lunar soil samples. However, the sampling process is very different from that on the Earth due to special characteristics of the lunar soil and surface environment. In order to ensure that the lunar exploration and sampling are successful, large numbers of ground experiments and computer simulations must be taken. In this paper, the surface lunar soil excavation simulation is investigated by three-dimensional discrete element method (DEM). It is implemented based on the open source LIGGGHTS, which takes the lunar soil as spherical particles. The interaction between the excavation tool and lunar soil is demonstrated. The excavation force and torque have also been calculated in real time. Moreover, the comparison of the excavation in different environments between the Earth and Moon corresponding to their different gravity accelerations was done. This paper shows that three-dimensional discrete element method can be used for the surface lunar soil excavation simulation and can provide important reference results for actual operations.