Assessment Of Geo-Mechanical Properties Of Lunar Simulants, Devansh Joshi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

Sophisticated manned and unmanned lunar missions are being developed by international collaborations of the USA, Canada, EU, India, China, Japan etc. for a long-term human presence on the moon. These lunar missions require prototype testing of rovers and other hardware on the earth to successfully interact with the lunar surface. This laboratory testing requires various simulant (terrestrial soil mimicking one or more lunar regolith characteristics) testbeds. Actual lunar soil is too pristine and scarce to be used for destructive testing. Hence, simulants have been developed by research institutions, space research organizations, or commercial manufacturers to cater to a wide …

Foundation Effects Of Trees Under Wind Loads, Padmavathi Venkata Sagi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Winching tests were conducted on a mature 24-year-old Norway spruce tree. The tree was instrumented with strain gauges along the root structure and tilt sensors along the tree stem and was winched to failure. Tracked tree-root system response to failure load and the material properties of the tree-root-soil system were used to examine the applicability of simple engineering principles to tree stability analysis. Tree stability was studied using the principles of Winkler foundation model for the first time. In order to study the very complex windthrow phenomenon, a novel experimental technique was used. Tree saplings with complete structural root systems …