[P-PS06] Lunar Science and Exploration

[PPS06-P01] Stress analysis of lunar geologic fold

*Ken Ishiyama¹ (1.National Institute of Technology, Tsuruoka College)

Keywords:Moon, Fold, LRS, Stress

The Earth’s moon is one of the familiar satellites as human, and the Moon is composed of high and low elevation regions (i.e., Highland and Mare regions). The lunar tectonic terrains, such as ridge (i.e., mountain) and graben (i.e., valley), were found on the mare region; the ridge is in the mare, while the graben is around the mare [1]. The ridge is formed by lunar global cooling and mascon tectonics processes [1, 2], which produce the horizontal compressional stress on lunar surface, as the results, sometimes form the normal and reverse faults or sometimes bend the subsurface layer [2, 3]. Thus, the geologic fold is formed under lunar ridge.
The SELENE/Lunar Radar Sounder (LRS) firstly detected the lunar geologic fold under lunar ridge [4]. The fault simulation suggested that the compressional stress (i.e., normal and shear stresses) could form the lunar fold [2]. On the other hand, the 1D bending formula can give us an analytic solution of fold formation by supposing the subsurface thickness and elastic parameters [3]. However, the fold detected by the LRS has not been analyzed in detail yet. This study would like to report the preliminary results of stress analysis of lunar fold in the presentation.

[1] Solomon and Head, Reviews of Geophysics, 18(1), pp.107-141, 1980
[2] Freed et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 106(E9), 20603-20620, 2001
[3] Trucotte and Schubert, Geodynamics, Cambridge University Press, 1-623, 2014
[4] Ono et al., Science, 323(5916), 909-912, 2009