Qiuhua Rao

Impact Compressive Creep Characteristics of Simulative Soil for Deep-Sea Sediment

The impact load (equivalent impact height) applied to deep-sea sediment by a walking mining machine was first deduced by the energy conservation principle, and the simulative soil was prepared based on the deep-sea sediment collected from the Pacific C-C mining area. The self-designed impact compressive creep tests of the simulative soil were conducted under different ground stresses and impact heights, in order to determine impact compressive creep parameters using a K-H rheological model. Test results show that the impact compressive creep curves have three similar creep stages (transient creep, unstable creep, and stable creep) to static compressive creep curves, where the transient creep deformation and total deformation at the unstable creep stage decrease with the impact load. Among the three impact compressive creep parameters (K1, K2, β) of the simulative soil, K1 is first increased with impact height and finally fluctuated to a certain stable value, while K2 and β are approximately linearly increased with impact height. The maximum subsidence of the mining machine under a specific designed ground stress and walking velocity predicted by the impact compressive creep constitutive equation can be used for safety assessment of the mining machine.

Predicting the sinkage of a moving tracked mining vehicle using a new rheological formulation for soft deep-sea sediment

The sinkage of a moving tracked mining vehicle is greatly affected by the combined compression-shear rheological properties of soft deep-sea sediments. For test purposes, the best sediment simulant is prepared based on soft deep-sea sediment from a C-C poly-metallic nodule mining area in the Pacific Ocean. Compressive creep tests and shear creep tests are combined to obtain compressive and shear rheological parameters to establish a combined compressive-shear rheological constitutive model and a compression-sinkage rheological constitutive model. The combined compression-shear rheological sinkage of the tracked mining vehicle at different speeds is calculated using the RecurDyn software with a selfprogrammed subroutine to implement the combined compression-shear rheological constitutive model. The model results are compared with shear rheological sinkage and ordinary sinkage (without consideration of rheological properties). These results show that the combined compression-shear rheological constitutive model must be taken into account when calculating the sinkage of a tracked mining vehicle. The combined compression-shear rheological sinkage decrease with vehicle speed and is the largest among the three types of sinkage. The developed subroutine in the RecurDyn software can be used to study the performance and structural optimization of moving tracked mining vehicles.