Pneumatic Regolith Handling for Martian ISRU Simulation Notebooks
Description
Simulation code accompanying "Pneumatic Regolith Handling for Martian ISRU: Feasibility of Excavation, Conveying, and Size Beneficiation Using the Martian Atmosphere" (M. Rejón López et al., manuscript submitted to Acta Astronautica Aug 2026). Three Python (Jupyter) notebooks reproduce every figure and table in the paper's results sections. The study assesses whether the thin Martian atmosphere (610 Pa, 210 K, CO₂) can serve as a working fluid to collect, transport, and size-sort regolith, using a harmonized first-order framework. Each notebook implements one process under identical conditions: pneumatic collection (Shao & Lu entrainment threshold), horizontal pneumatic transport (minimum-conveying-velocity criterion), and vertical air classification (terminal-velocity cut size with a Tromp split). Terminal velocity uses a shared Ganser (1993) drag law with Cunningham slip correction, and power a common fan model, so the three processes compare on a normalized power-per-throughput basis. Each notebook is self-contained, reads all inputs from one parameter cell, verifies physical validity before producing results, and regenerates its figures as vector PDFs. Dependencies are standard open-source scientific Python (NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib); developed on Python 3.12. Martian grain-size distributions used as classifier feed are taken from Preston et al. (2024); only reported per-site median and geometric standard deviation are used, with no third-party dataset redistributed. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Germany's Excellence Strategy — EXC-3036 "The Martian Mindset", project 533607631.
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Institutions
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR)North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne