Toward a model of grain surface exposure in planetary regoliths

The interpretation of solar wind implanted gas concentration versus particle size for lunar regolith samples is considered. In so doing, interparticle adhesive forces are considered explicitly and the simplest possible grain exposure law consistent with the existence of such forces is hypothesized. Namely, for particles small enough that these forces exceed the lunar gravitational force, any element of area has equal probability of being in the regolith surface regardless of the size of the grain on which it is situated. This law leads to the expectation that concentrations will depend inversely on mean grain radius for small grains and gradually become independent of radius for very large grains consistent with observations. Therefore, such a concentration dependence cannot by used to infer the presence of saturation losses.