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Development of a drilling and coring test-bed for lunar subsurface exploration and preliminary experiments

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Abstract

Drill sampling has been widely employed as an effective way to acquire deep samples in extraterrestrial exploration. A novel sampling method, namely, flexible-tube coring, was adopted for the Chang’e mission to acquire drilling cores without damaging stratification information. Since the extraterrestrial environment is uncertain and different from the terrestrial environment, automated drill sampling missions are at risk of failure. The principles of drilling and coring for the lunar subsurface should be fully tested and verified on earth before launch. This paper proposes a test-bed for conducting the aforementioned experiments on earth. The test-bed comprises a rotary-percussive drilling mechanism, penetrating mechanism, drilling medium container, and signal acquisition and control system. For granular soil, coring experiments indicate that the sampling method has a high coring rate greater than 80%. For hard rock, drilling experiments indicate that the percussive frequency greatly affects the drilling efficiency. A multi-layered simulant composed of granular soil and hard rock is built to test the adaptability of drilling and coring. To tackle complex drilling media, an intelligent drilling strategy based on online recognition is proposed to improve the adaptability of the sampling drill. The primary features of this research are the proposal of a scheme for drilling and coring a test-bed for validation on earth and the execution of drilling experiments in complex media.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Xiaomeng Shi, Zongquan Deng, Qiquan Quan, Dewei Tang, Xuyan Hou & Shengyuan Jiang

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  1. Xiaomeng Shi
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  2. Zongquan Deng
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  3. Qiquan Quan
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  4. Dewei Tang
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  5. Xuyan Hou
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  6. Shengyuan Jiang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qiquan Quan.

Additional information

Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No. 51105092), Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities(111 Program, Grant No. B07018), Heilongjiang Postdoctoral Grant(Grant No. LBH-Z11168), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(Grant No. 2012M520722)

SHI Xiaomeng, born in 1986, is currently a PhD candidate at Research Center of Aerospace Mechanism Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. He received his master’s and bachelor’s degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2008 and 2010, respectively. His research interests include extraterrestrial planet unmanned sampling.

DENG Zongquan, born in 1956, is currently a professor and a PhD candidate supervisor at the Research Center of Aerospace Mechanism Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include extraterrestrial planet unmanned sampling.

QUAN Qiquan, born in 1983, is currently an inspector at Research Center of Aerospace Mechanism Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include extraterrestrial planet unmanned sampling, mobile robots, and ultrasonic sampling.

TANG Dewei, born in 1966, is currently a professor and a PhD candidate supervisor at Research Center of Aerospace Mechanism Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include extraterrestrial planet unmanned sampling, pipe robots, and gear transmission.

HOU Xuyan, born in 1981, is currently an inspector at Research Center of Aerospace Mechanism Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include extraterrestrial planet unmanned sampling and DEM simulation.

JIANG Shengyuan, born in 1969, is currently a professor at Research Center of Aerospace Mechanism Control, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include extraterrestrial planet unmanned sampling.

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Shi, X., Deng, Z., Quan, Q. et al. Development of a drilling and coring test-bed for lunar subsurface exploration and preliminary experiments. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. 27, 673–682 (2014). https://doi.org/10.3901/CJME.2014.0508.088

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3901/CJME.2014.0508.088

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