Assessment of shear strength and compressibility characteristics of a newly developed lunar highland soil simulant (LSS-ISAC-1) for Chandrayaan lander and rover missions

The engineering properties (shear strength and compressibility) of lunar soils influence the design of landers, rovers, and their mobility behavior on the lunar surface. Assessing such properties is important for any lunar-based studies, and it is usually being determined by using suitable lunar soil simulants. This paper explains the shear strength parameters, stress-strain relationships, and volume change behavior of the newly developed lunar highland soil simulant (LSS-ISAC-1), apart from particle size distribution, which have a profound influence on the engineering behavior. In addition, to the above, other engineering properties such as critical state of the angle of internal friction, dilatancy angle, Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, internal erodibility, small-strain shear wave velocity, and shear modulus have also been evaluated and presented. Mohr-Coulomb and friction-dilatancy theories are considered as a base for the analysis with the use of statistical predictive equations. The relative density and confining pressures are used as functions in the predictive equation to assess the behavior of the LSS-ISAC-1. The comparison of properties with the actual lunar highland soil samples of the Apollo 16 mission reveals a reasonable similarity of LSS-ISAC-1 with the lunar highland soils. •A new novel lunar highland simulant (LSS-ISAC-1) was developed to represents the lunar highland soils using the anorthosite rock without the addition of any other foreign material and minerals. Whereas all the available lunar simulants were developed using mixture of different materials and minerals to match the bulk chemistry and mineralogy of the reference lunar soils.•The geotechnical properties of the LSS-ISAC-1 were thoroughly assessed based on ASTM standards and compared with the Apollo – lunar highland soils (Reference Samples).•The simulant was compared with the available lunar highland simulants (NU-LHT-2M and NAO-1) to show the reliability, similarity and uniqueness of the LSS-ISAC-1. The LSS-ISAC-1 is having better similarity with both bulk chemistry and geotechnical properties with the highland soils than that of the other highland simulants.•The engineering properties (shear strength and compressibility) of lunar soils influence the design of landers, rovers, and their mobility behavior on the lunar surface. This paper explains the shear strength parameters, stress-strain relationships, and volume change behavior of the newly developed lunar highland soil