Casting Lunar Regolith into Durable Materials

There has been a wide variety of research exploring how regolith can be manufactured into building materials. Manufacturing techniques such as sintering, additive manufacturing, and casting. Liquid/solid-phase sintering and additive manufacturing have received the most attention for use in space thus far, while basalt casting has limited research. Comprehensive casting experiments were conducted at the Colorado School of Mines foundry, casting lunar regolith simulant. Our casting experiments encompass two main areas: (1) casting molten basalt and anorthosite, and mixtures thereof; (2) casting in various molding materials. The results of the basalt and basalt/anorthosite experiments produced vitrified and shattered materials. Annealing was introduced to significantly reduce the amount of vitrification and the number of noticeable defects.