Compliant mechanisms for dust mitigation in Lunar hardware development: technology and material considerations

Abstract During the Apollo missions, astronauts observed negative impact of Lunar dust on surface hardware. The characteristics environment and regolith properties accelerate contamination promote abrasion clogging different components in equipment. To protect hardware from damages future several mitigation technologies must be adapted. In this work, we propose to consider application solutions that are naturally resilient. Such solutions, called implicit technologies, include usage compliant mechanisms. Compliant mechanisms use elastic deformation achieve motion can replace rigid-body suffer increased friction jamming due accumulation inter-element gaps. Material selection for needs considered very early design process, as demonstrated our it is crucial final mechanism performance.