JMEE Home · Issue Contents · Forthcoming Papers
A Review Study on Interactions Between the Deep-Sea Benthonic Mining Vehicle and the Marine Sediment
Xuguang Chen, Tianyi Xu, Gen Li and Lubao Luan
Developments of modern industrialization heavily depend on energy resources, leading to the rapid decrease of land-mineral resources. As a result, the exploitation of marine resources, including the coastwise oil and gas resources, and the benthonic metallic mineral resources in the abysmal sea, has gained its popularity in the industrial community. This paper mainly focuses on developments of exploiting the deep-sea benthonic metallic mineral resources and presents a review on recent studies about interactions between the deep-sea benthonic mining vehicle and the marine sediment. For that, the recently reported benthonic crawler-mounted vehicles are summarized firstly. Following that, responses of soils subjected to movements of the crawler-mounted vehicle, characteristics of pressure-sinkage relationship and of shear stress-shear displacement relationship reported in the literature are presented. Finally, some existing problems that existed in the current studies and future prospects about the deep-sea mining vehicle are presented in the conclusion. This study is capable of providing a basic understanding of the current researching status of the deep-sea benthonic mining vehicle.
Keywords: Deep-sea mining vehicle, polymetallic nodules, soil response, pressure-sinkage relationship, shear force-shear displacement relationship