Abstract

There is recently an increasing interest to explore the ways to find out the characteristics of other planets and possibility of exploiting their mineral resources. The images sent to Earth from Mars exploration rovers showed that rocks and geological and tectonic structures are strikingly similar to those in Earth. In this study, the stress state of Mars is investigated using a spherical symmetric body concept together with the consideration of a thermo-elasto-plastic behaviour of the Earth’s constituting materials on the basis of the previous investigation of the stress state of Earth by Aydan [1,2,3]. Fundamentally four different situations, namely, fluid, elastic, elasto-plastic and thermo-elasto-plastic have been considered and the computational results are presented and their implications are discussed.

Introduction

Mankind is now exploring the ways to find out the characteristics of other planets and possibility of exploiting their mineral resources. One of most impressive images from the Apollo Program of NASA to the author was the man standing next to a fractured lunar rock mass. The images from recent Mars exploration rovers showed the striking similarities between rocks on Earth and those of Mars, which motivated the author to bring together some of his thoughts about the aspects of rock mechanics and rock engineering in Mars and to compare them with those of the earth [4,5,6,7].

Although the environmental conditions on Mars and other planets are different from those on Earth, the principles governing mechanical and engineering aspects of rocks on other planets should be quite similar to those developed for rocks of Earth. Therefore, the next generations of our discipline would definitely see its extension to the rocks of other planets. The establishment of the Commission on Planetary Rock Mechanics by the International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering (ISRM) is one of the first steps for such a goal.

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