Development of a multifunctional SolidStir manufacturing technology for lunar infrastructure

As a part of the Artemis mission, building a base camp on south pole for astronauts to land, live and explore has been planned. In order to support human presence and further exploration setting up metal extraction and primary manufacturing facility is essential. The extraction plants that are developed for earth on the moon is cost prohibitive and complicated since necessary consumable are not readily available on the moon. Hence special processes are being developed. The products from these processes expected to be with varying level of purity, smaller in quantities, and non-uniform in size. In such scenario the metal products also expected to have regolith entrapment on the surface. To convert such metal products into structural members in the form of angles, rods, or tubes requires an energy efficient, reliable, and contaminant tolerant process that is capable of consolidating and forming into required shapes. Enabled Engineering proposes to use a novel, 2023 Big IDEA Challenge award winning, modular and multifunctional SolidStir® manufacturing technology to produce structural truss elements such as tubes, angles and rods in solid-state. SolidStir is a Friction Stir Welding/Processing (FSW/P) based continuous plastic deformation process. This energy efficient technology can also be adapted for upcycling, additive manufacturing and joining. This process can be operated as independent system or augmented with other system with rotary axis. The objective of the program is to demonstrate the feasibility of manufacturing truss members such as tubes, square rods and angles from simulated metals from lunar metal extraction process using SolidStir® extrusion technology. The deliverables include a report on know-how of process, material-structure-process-property relationship with varying contamination levels, effect of process parameters on force and energy requirement, and specification and design of SolidStir® extrusion system for lunar environment.