Summary

Description

<p>The purpose of this project is to develop lunar regolith based geopolymer concrete and perform differential shielding studies on various geopolymer formulations to determine if sufficient protection from radiation in space environments can be enabled. For the initial testing of these concrete matrices, a variety of locally-available radiation sources will be used. As part of the proposed work, geopolymer and ‘Lunamer’ concrete matrices will be constructed and their ability to shield radiation will be evaluated. The geopolymer matrices will be prepared using fly ash as the pre-curser, barite (BaSO4) and hematite (Fe2O3) as the aggregate and metallic chips, representing the state-of-the-art in Earth-based construction practices. The ‘Lunamer’ concrete matrices will be made using geopolymerized lunar regolith with entrained carbon fibers and carbon black for EMI shielding and metallic chips. These will include radiation energies within this range of biological interest, but will also include those of lower energies. While such low energy sources cannot be used to correlate the biological impact of high energy radiation, they do provide a useful tool to quantify the relative shielding behavior of different materials.                   </p>