Light Weight Nodule Collection System for Deep Sea Mining Machine

Abstract

India has been developing technology for deep sea mining to harvest polymetallic nodules from the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB). The crawler type mining machine was developed to harvest polymetallic nodules from the sea bed. The nodule collector system is attached in front of the mining machine to collect the nodules from the seabed. The development of light weight nodule collection system of the subsea mining machine was prerequisite for reducing the overall underwater weight and volume of the deep sea mining machine. A Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been carried out by using the terramechanics approach to predict the soil resistance during the nodule collection system testing with various soil strengths and operating conditions. The complete system has been simulated in multibody dynamic analysis with different operating conditions by applying the reaction forces from the FEA to estimate the reaction forces on the nodule collection system. These results are very essential and applied during the design of a light weight nodule collection system of the deep sea mining machine.This paper presents the design, analysis and functional prototype testing of a light weight nodule collection system of the deep sea mining machine in bentonite soil which is used to manifest the polymetallic nodule collection from CIOB at a depth of 6000 m.