A prototype lunar habitat made from 3D-printed regolith collapsed during a pressure test. The structure failed explosively, not due to an impact, but from internal decompression. The forensic simulation team used a pipeline composed of GOM Inspect, Ansys, Autodesk Fusion, and Blender to dissect the failure, focusing on material porosity and low interlayer adhesion.
Digital Diagnosis: Porosity and Adhesion in Granular Materials 🧪
The analysis began in GOM Inspect, where the geometry of the collapsed dome was scanned to capture plastic deformation. This model was imported into Autodesk Fusion to reconstruct the printing sequence and isolate suspicious layers. In Ansys, a granular material model was configured using simulated regolith parameters. The simulation revealed that porosity, exceeding 15% in certain areas, acted as a crack initiator. When internal pressure was applied, layers with low adhesion (detected by a lack of fusion between beads) gave way, causing an explosive decompression. Blender was used to visualize the failure progression, showing how stresses concentrated at points of high porosity.
Lessons for Extraterrestrial Habitats 🚀
This case demonstrates that material fatigue in extraterrestrial environments depends not only on absolute strength but on the homogeneity of the printing process. The 3D forensic pipeline allows for the identification of cohesion failures that go unnoticed in standard tests. For future lunar habitats, it will be critical to monitor the density of each layer in real-time and adjust the sintering temperature to avoid the low adhesion that causes these catastrophic collapses.
Considering the failure was explosive rather than progressive, which material fatigue metrics should be prioritized in the 3D pipeline to predict the inherent fragility of sintered regolith under internal pressure loads?
(PS: Material fatigue is like yours after 10 hours of simulation.)