My research is a comparative study of thermal regolith processing. I work on the Design, Build, and Test (DBT) for three energy delivery methods:
- Laser Sintering: High-power CO₂ lasers for sintering and melting regolith in various sizes.
- Microwave Sintering: Volumetric heating taking advantage of larger penetration depth.
- Solar Sintering: Concentrating solar energy for less expensive process similar to laser sintering, but with significantly lower power requirements.
I investigate optimal parameters for high-fidelity structural components. My research extends to incorporating metal and thermoplastic additives to engineer components with different functions while reducing the amount of building materials that would need to be sent from Earth.
I characterize the samples I make with different techiniques to get compositional, thermal and mechanical which allow me to compare the different sintering methods’ products and establish what are their best use case scenario. I conduct this research within LUNA, Europe’s largest lunar analog facility.