Lunar dust mitigation for solar cells via ultrasonic vibrations

Abstract

This study presents piezoelectric actuator placement to induce vibration dust mitigation and offers a solution to mitigate dust accumulation on lunar photovoltaic arrays by bonding a system of piezoelectric actuators to the inactive side of a solar cell. Once deployed, the solar cells and actuators can detect dust accumulation and automatically activate to induce surface vibrations, producing surface acceleration on the solar cell sufficient to overcome contaminant adhesive forces. Three solar cell prototypes were created. All three prototypes were tested for mitigation efficiency when clean, when lightly coated in 1.30mg/cm2 of JSC-1A dust simulant, and after vibration dust mitigation. One prototype was tested at an angle of 10° for levels of dust loading from 1.07mg/cm2 to 16.37mg/cm2 and results indicated that the mitigation efficiency decreased from 60.8% to 33.6% with increasing dust loading. An average of 43% mitigation efficiency was measured with up to 94% maximum mitigation efficiency (measured by solar cell I-V curve tests), and a prototype was cryogenically cycled without impedance spectrum degradation. An energy reclamation case study result estimated 278MJ/kg return on actuator mass cost over one year.

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Comments

Missouri University of Science and Technology, Grant 80NSSC20M0100

Keywords and Phrases

Dust accumulation; Lunar dust mitigation; Mitigation efficiency; Piezoelectric; Solar cell; Vibration

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0094-5765

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2025 Elsevier, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Mar 2025

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS