Multiscale modeling and testing of biopolymer-bound soil composites
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Extraterrestrial construction presents many interesting and new challenges. Unlike Earth, in extraterrestrial environments, such as the moon or Mars, there are limited, naturally-occurring, resources that are readily available for construction purposes. Transporting large amounts of materials from Earth is cost prohibitive. This work focuses on the development of a novel class of composites for use in limited resource environments: Biopolymer-bound Soil Composites (BSC). The composite is produced by mixing soil, water, and a biopolymer binder to create a versatile composite with compressive strength comparable to that of ordinary Portland cement concrete (upwards of 40 MPa). This dissertation introduces a multi-scale framework to model and test the composite's mechanical properties for the purpose of robust design of BSC materials that can resist extreme environments. At the nanoscale, nanoindentation is used to obtain the mechanical properties of the dry biopolymer after dissolving in water and desiccating. At the microscale, the creation of Statistically Equivalent Periodic Unit Cells based on microCT images captures the spatial arrangement of soil particles, desiccated biopolymer and voids. Finite element modeling is then used to obtain basic mechanical parameters. At the mesoscale, a Rigid Body Spring Method (RBSM) model is used to simulate fracture using the homogenized properties obtained at the microscale. At the macroscale, triaxial testing and uniaxial tests aided by digital image correlation (DIC) are used to corroborate and tune the simulations. The goal of this dissertation is to devise a framework to support robust computational simulations that enable the prediction of the mechanical properties of BSC materials with different biopolymer-soil combinations. These new BSC materials can then be used in the design of future structures on the Moon, Mars or other celestial bodies. This work represents the first steps towards a comprehensive framework for computational modeling of BSC materials.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Rosa Plata, Isamar |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Lepech, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Lepech, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Borja, Ronaldo Israel |
| Thesis advisor | Loftus, David |
| Degree committee member | Borja, Ronaldo Israel |
| Degree committee member | Loftus, David |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Isamar Rosa Plata. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Isamar Rosa Plata
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...