Compressional stress effect on thermal conductivity of powdered materials: Measurements and their implication to lunar regolith

Thermal conductivity of powdered materials under vacuum conditions is a valuable physical parameter in the context of planetary sciences. We report results of thermal conductivity measurements of 90-106 μm and 710-1000 μm glass beads, and lunar regolith simulant using two different experimental setups for varying the compressional stress and the temperature, respectively. We found the thermal conductivity increase with the compressional stress, for example, from 0.003 to 0.008 W m−1 K−1 for the glass beads of 90-106 μm in diameter at the compressional stress less than 20 kPa. This increase of the thermal conductivity is attributed the areal enlargement of the contacts between particles due to their elastic deformation. The thermal conductivity increased also with temperature, which primarily represented enhancement of the radiative heat conduction between particles. Reduction of the estimated radiative conductivity from the effective thermal conductivity obtained in the first experiment yields the relation between the solid conductivity (conductive contribution through inter-particle contacts) and the compressional stress. We found that the solid conductivity is proportional to approximately 1/3 power of the compressional stress for the glass beads samples, while the regolith simulant showed a weaker exponent than that of the glass beads. We developed a semi-empirical expression of the thermal conductivity of the lunar regolith using our data on the lunar regolith simulant. This model enabled us to estimate a vertical distribution of the lunar subsurface thermal conductivity. Our model provides an examination for the density and compressional stress relationships to thermal conductivity observed in the in-situ measurements in Apollo 15 and 17 Heat Flow Experiments.