Date of Award

5-27-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Applied Science

First Advisor

Haydar Al-Shukri

Abstract

NASA's plan to build a base on the Moon necessitates employing a vital lunar resource to support life on the Moon due to the high cost of transportation and logistics. Ilmenite is believed to be one of the best performing minerals to serve the need. In order to detect Ilmenite within lunar regolith, a robust and a non-invasive technique is required. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is advanced electromagnetic (EM) probing equipment that facilitates high frequency pulses to image subsurface. Due to its significant metal content, Ilmenite has prominent reflection characteristics to the EM waves. The EM waves transmitted from an antenna are modified within the host medium due to the changes in mineralogy and chemistry. Therefore, absorption of the EM waves can be indicative of the subsurface mineralogy and chemistry. Intrinsic attenuation is a measure of loss of the EM wave energy which is related to material properties only. Thus, mineral identification for the host medium is possible with calculation of the intrinsic attenuation. In order to calculate the intrinsic attenuation, electrical conductivity and dielectric permittivity of the medium should be examined by analyzing GPR signal. The decay of the signal will carry adequate information to identify mineralogy for both layered and non-layered medium. Detecting the highest possible concentration of Ilmenite within a survey area is also important for a feasible mining operation. Therefore, in addition to the intrinsic absorption characteristics carried out via attenuation, energy calculated with the proposed method will also provide information about the variation in concentration. Synthetic modeling and laboratory measurements were implemented to substantiate the possibility of detecting mineral identification and concentration using GPR. This was followed by three full scale field expeditions in western Arkansas, California, and Hawaii to collect GPR data and soil samples to associate the data with mineralogy.

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