Low-power microwave coring machine suitable for lunar rocks and method of using the same

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11913336-B2
Application number	US-202117618365-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 1, 2021
Priority date	Mar 30, 2021
Publication date	Feb 27, 2024
Grant date	Feb 27, 2024

Abstract

The invention relates to a low-power microwave coring machine suitable for lunar rocks and a use method. The low-power microwave coring machine suitable for lunar rocks comprises an equipment platform, wherein the support framework front plate and the support framework rear plate are mounted on the equipment platform in a sliding manner, a rear end surface of the support framework rear plate is connected with a front end of the microwave generator mounted on the equipment platform, a rear end of the microwave generator is sequentially connected with the fixed waveguide, the rotary waveguide, the power divider and the drill drum, the high-precision slip ring structure is mounted on the drill drum, the gear ferrules are arranged on an outer wall of the rotary waveguide and an outer wall of the drill drum.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A low-power microwave coring machine suitable for lunar rocks, comprising: a drill drum, a microwave generator, a high-precision slip ring structure, a rotary waveguide, a microwave generator, a rotary driver, two tunneling drivers, an equipment platform, equipment slide rails and a support framework,
wherein the equipment slide rails are symmetrically arranged on the equipment platform, a support framework front plate and a support framework rear plate are mounted on the equipment slide rails in a sliding manner, a rear end surface of the support framework rear plate is connected with a front end of the microwave generator, the microwave generator is mounted on the equipment platform in a sliding manner, a rear end of the microwave generator is connected with one end of a fixed waveguide, and the other end of the fixed waveguide is rotationally mounted at a rear end of the rotary waveguide; the rotary waveguide as a change-over device rotates itself and rotates and transmits microwaves from the fixed waveguide in a lossless manner; a front end of the rotary waveguide is connected with a rear end of a power divider, a front end of the power divider is connected with a rear end of the drill drum through coaxial cables, and a front end of the drill drum is in contact with a rock stratum; the high-precision slip ring structure sleeves an excircle of the drill drum, and lossless collection of reflection signals of the power divider under a rotary condition is realized; the rotary waveguide is located in a through hole in a top of the support framework rear plate, and the rotary waveguide can rotate in the through hole in the support framework rear plate; the drill drum is located in a through hole in a top of the support framework front plate, and the drill drum can rotate in the through hole in the support framework front plate; a gear ferrule is arranged on both of an outer wall of the rotary waveguide and an outer wall of the drill drum, and the gear ferrules are both located at a front end of the support framework rear plate and a front end of the support framework front plate which are in corresponding arrangement; a transmission gear engaged with the corresponding gear ferrule is arranged below each gear ferrule, the two transmission gears are both in key connection with a rotary shaft, a front end of the rotary shaft penetrates through a through hole in a middle of the support framework front plate and is in key connection with one of the transmission gears, a rear end of the rotary shaft is in key connection with the other transmission gear and penetrates through a through hole in a middle of the support framework rear plate to be connected with an output end of the rotary driver; the rotary driver is fixedly mounted on the support framework rear plate through bolts, the gear ferrules are driven by the transmission gear of the rotary driver to rotate, and further the rotary waveguide, the power divider and the drill drum are driven to rotate together; and a rear end of each tunneling driver is connected with a corresponding tunneling driver base, the tunneling driver bases are fixed on the equipment platform, a front end of each tunneling driver penetrates through a through hole in a middle and lower part of the support framework rear plate to be connected with the support framework front plate, the tunneling drivers propel the support framework front plate to apply propelling force on the drill drum, and the two tunneling drivers are symmetrically arranged by using the drill drum as a symcenter.

2. The low-power microwave coring machine according to claim 1 , wherein the drill drum is a hollow round metal tube, a plurality of through holes are drilled in an axial direction of a drum wall of the drill drum and are uniformly distributed in a circumferential direction, coaxial waveguides are respectively mounted in the through holes, a front end of each coaxial waveguide penetrates through the drum wall of the drill drum to be connected with a corresponding microwave radiator, a quartz sleeve which is fixed on a front end surface sleeves a front end of each microwave radiator, a rear end of each coaxial waveguide is connected with the corresponding coaxial cable, a cutter is mounted on an end surface of the drum wall of the drill drum between every two adjacent coaxial waveguides, and a height of each cutter is higher than that of the corresponding quartz sleeve.

3. The low-power microwave coring machine according to claim 1 , wherein the power divider comprises one microwave power input end, four microwave power output ends and four insulating and protecting ends, the four microwave power output ends are respectively connected with the four insulating and protecting ends, the four insulating and protecting ends are respectively connected with the corresponding coaxial waveguides through the coaxial cables, the microwave power input end is connected with the rotary waveguide, and the power divider has an effect of allocating and adjusting an output power of each coaxial waveguide.

4. The low-power microwave coring machine according to claim 1 , wherein the microwave generator absorbs reflection microwaves through a solid loaded graphite plate, and adopts a heat conduction manner for cooling, and heat is transferred to an external environment; and a maximum power of the microwave generator is 1000 W, and a type of microwave adopts millimeter waves.

5. The low-power microwave coring machine according to claim 1 , wherein the high-precision slip ring structure comprises rotor signal lines, high-precision slip ring rotors, high-precision signal carbon brushes, high-precision slip ring stators and high-precision stator signal lines, wherein the high-precision slip ring rotors sleeve the excircle of the drill drum and synchronously rotate with the drill drum, each rotor signal line is connected to the corresponding high-precision slip ring rotor, the rotor signal lines are respectively connected with the four corresponding insulating and protecting ends through a signal converter, each high-precision slip ring rotor is rotationally connected with the corresponding high-precision slip ring stator through the corresponding high-precision signal carbon brush, the high-precision slip ring rotors rotate along with the drill drum, but the high-precision slip ring stators and the high-precision signal carbon brushes do not move, signals of the high-precision slip ring rotors are transmitted into the high-precision slip ring stators in a lossless manner through the high-precision signal carbon brushes, reflection wave signals are transmitted into a controller of the microwave generator through the high-precision stator lines, the controller controls the microwave generator in the low-power microwave coring machine to switch on and switch off, and microwave parameters are adjusted at any time through the reflection wave signals fed back by the high-precision slip ring structure.

6. A method of using the low-power microwave coring machine suitable for lunar rocks according to claim 1 , comprising the following steps:
step 1: switching on a microwave generator and not starting tunneling drivers and a rotary driver, wherein properties of the rock stratum in regions irradiated by four microwave power output ends is determined by reflection coefficients fed back by the four microwave power output ends, and when the reflection coefficients of the four microwave power output ends do not have differences, the properties of the rock stratum in the regions are consistent; when the reflection coefficients of the four microwave power output ends have significant differences, large reflection coefficients represent that the rock stratum of the regions having large reflection coefficients have high compactness; and in order to prev

Assignees

• Univ Northeastern

Inventors

• Feng Xiating
• Lin Feng
• Yang Chengxiang
• Tian Jun
• Tong Tianyang
• Li Shiping

Classifications

• E21C51/00 Primary

  Apparatus for, or methods of, winning materials from extraterrestrial sources (cosmonautics B64G) · CPC title

• E21B3/02

  Surface drives for rotary drilling · CPC title

• E21B7/00

  Special methods or apparatus for drilling · CPC title

• E21B15/003

  adapted to be moved on their substructure, e.g. with skidding means; adapted to drill a plurality of wells · CPC title

• E21B25/00

  Apparatus for obtaining or removing undisturbed cores, e.g. core barrels or core extractors (core bits E21B10/02) · CPC title