When soil is placed in a vacuum chamber and a vacuum pump is operated, the soil disturbance phenomenon is occurred. This is due to the pressure difference between the upper and lower parts of the soil during pumping down. For creating vacuum without s...
When soil is placed in a vacuum chamber and a vacuum pump is operated, the soil disturbance phenomenon is occurred. This is due to the pressure difference between the upper and lower parts of the soil during pumping down. For creating vacuum without soil disturbance, slow pumping method by a venturi pump and a butterfly valve is used. The degree of vacuum is deteriorated due to outgassing from the soil, and the 2 m³ vacuum chamber reached to 3E-5 mbar after 140 hours pumping including 300kg of lunar soil simulant. As a result of analyzing the residual gas inside the chamber, the amount of moisture was greater than in the empty chamber. Therefore, it is necessary to minimize moisture of the soil for reduction of pumping down time to reach target pressure. Based on the experiment of vacuum testing with lunar soil simulant, we have built a large vacuum chamber that is able to contain 20 tons of soil inside. We expected that the chamber accelerates construction technology on the lunar surface.