TY - JOUR A1 - Ginés-Palomares, J.-C. A1 - Fateri, M. A1 - Schubert, T. A1 - de Peindray d’Ambelle, L. A1 - Simon, Sebastian A1 - Gluth, Gregor A1 - Günster, Jens A1 - Zocca, Andrea T1 - Material aspects of sintering of EAC-1A lunar regolith simulant N2 - Future lunar exploration will be based on in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) techniques. The most abundant raw material on the Moon is lunar regolith, which, however, is very scarce on Earth, making the study of simulants a necessity. The objective of this study is to characterize and investigate the sintering behavior of EAC-1A lunar regolith simulant. The characterization of the simulant included the determination of the phase assemblage, characteristic temperatures determination and water content analysis. The results are discussed in the context of sintering experiments of EAC-1A simulant, which showed that the material can be sintered to a relative density close to 90%, but only within a very narrow range of temperatures (20–30 °C). Sintering experiments were performed for sieved and unsieved, as well as for dried and non-dried specimens of EAC-1A. In addition, an analysis of the densification and mechanical properties of the sintered specimens was done. The sintering experiments at different temperatures showed that the finest fraction of sieved simulant can reach a higher maximum sintering temperature, and consequently a higher densification and biaxial strength. The non-dried powder exhibited higher densification and biaxial strength after sintering compared to the dried specimen. This difference was explained with a higher green density of the non-dried powder during pressing, rather than due to an actual influence on the sintering mechanism. Nevertheless, drying the powder prior to sintering is important to avoid the overestimation of the strength of specimens to be fabricated on the Moon. KW - Lunar regolith KW - Ceramics KW - Microstructure KW - Sintering KW - Softening temperature PY - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-592668 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 13 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Springer Nature AN - OPUS4-59266 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -