Planetary Simulant Database
Free Resource for Regolith Simulant Information
Mineralogy
The mineralogy of the source rock is described in Sun et al. (2022) as being dominated by plagioclase (An41-59). "Damiao anorthosite complex chemistry is not ideal...but alteration is relatively minimal and mineralogy is otherwise acceptable, featuring normative percent plagioclase, plus pyroxene, biotite, and amphibole, as well as minor opaques"
Bulk Chemistry
| Oxide | Wt.% |
|---|---|
| SiO2 | 65.15 |
| TiO2 | 0.04 |
| Al2O3 | 19.28 |
| FeO | – |
| Fe2O3 | 1.31 |
| MnO | 0.01 |
| MgO | 0.06 |
| CaO | 6.45 |
| Na2O | 4.95 |
| K2O | 2.74 |
| P2O5 | 0.01 |
| LOI | 0.77 |
| Total | 100.77 |
Physical Properties
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Mean grain size | 85.7 μm |
| Specific gravity | 2.74 |
| Bulk density | 1.72 g/cm3 |
| Minimum bulk density | 1.40 g/cm3 |
| Maximum bulk density | 2.00 g/cm3 |
| Peak friction angle | 36.84–44.19° |
| Cohesion | 0.53–1.58 kPa |
JLU-H Highland Simulant
Simulant Name: JLU-H
Availability: May Be Available
Fidelity: Standard
Developed By: Jilin University, Changchun, China
Publications: Sun, X. et al. (2022), JLU-H: A novel lunar highland regolith simulant for use in large-scale engineering experiments
JLU-H is a lunar highland simulant developed at Jilin University in Changchun, China. It is described in a publication by Sun et al. (2022). The simulant is made from anorthosite sourced from the Damiao Anorthosite Complex in Hebei Province. Some of the motivations for the new simulant include the complexity, cost, and questionable availability of previous highland simulants.
The anorthosite is processed through a series of crushing and screening steps to create different particle size fractions, then those fractions are recombined in specific ratios to achieve the desired particle size fraction. One advantage of this simulant is that it includes pebbles between 2-5 cm in size, whereas other simulants are typically <1 mm which is not realistic consider the embedded rocks present in lunar soils.
Image of the JLU-H source rocks from Sun et al. (2022)
Microscope image of JLU-H particles from Sun et al. (2022)