Methods for Modeling Lunar Dust in Thermal Desktop Based on Lunar Dust Level Sensor and Effects on Surfaces Test Data

With the upcoming Artemis Missions and renewed interest in lunar exploration, there is an ongoing concern about how to analyze the impacts of lunar regolith on critical thermal components like optical coatings. Often, the Rule of Mixtures or similar relationships are considered sufficient for calculating how optical properties should change on a regolith-covered surface. However, recent studies by the Lunar Dust Level Sensor and Effects on Surfaces (LDES) team produced results that suggest lunar simulant coverage impacts the effective emissivity of surfaces in a nonlinear fashion, resulting from a complicated heat transfer path through the regolith layer. This paper documents the efforts to compare different methods of modeling dust in Thermal Desktop (TD) based on the LDES effective emittance values and the Lunar Highlands dust simulant’s (LHS-1D) optical and thermophysical properties. Initial correlation to the undusted coupon data was done using a TD model of the test setup. Subsequent correlation for dusted coupons determines modeling effectiveness by comparing the model’s sensor heater power used to test data, and the model’s estimated radiation versus theoretical calculated radiation from the surface of the coating to the TVAC chamber shroud. The study found that the best heater power comparison resulted from modeling method 4, where error for the top heater correlation was within +/-10% and the error for the radiation check was within +/-5%. However, this study depicts a very specific use case and is not recommended to be adopted for general analysis until desired future work can be completed.