Velocity Measurements of Powdered Rock at Low Confining Pressures and Comparison to Lunar Shallow Seismic Velocity

Abstract

Seismic methods will be useful for future lunar near‐surface characterization, and high‐fidelity elastic models will be required to aid interpretation of seismic observations. To develop an elastic lunar near‐surface model, we performed ultrasonic velocity measurements of lunar regolith simulant at low confining pressure and developed a rock physics model calibrated to these measurements. Grain contact models based on Hertz‐Mindlin theory produce accurate results at high confining pressure (i.e., several hundred meters or more burial depth) but historically fail to predict observed velocities in unconsolidated media at low pressure. Therefore, we heuristically modified existing models to fit our measured data over a range of porosities and confining pressures. To compare with Apollo 14 and 16 active seismic experiments, we used our new heuristic rock physics model to produce lunar subsurface velocity profiles. We performed ray tracing through our velocity profiles to calculate seismic traveltime, which results in good agreement with first arrivals interpreted from the Apollo experiments. Our model suggests a slightly higher velocity‐pressure dependence than inferred from in situ measurements, which may be due to porosity reduction in the lunar regolith from impact‐induced and natural vibrations.