Deep-sea sediments have the characteristics of high water content, strong compressibility, low shear strength, and relatively soft. Mining vehicles will experience substantial sinkage when operating on the seabed, and additional compaction resistance and bulldozing resistance will directly affect the mining vehicle. walking performance, and it is necessary to study the sinkage performance of mining vehicles. Deep-sea mining vehicles usually use the track plate as the traveling mechanism, and the track plate is an important part of the track plate system. It is significant to study the sinkage interaction between the track plate and the soil to study the sinkage performance of the mining vehicle. Based on a 1000-meter undisturbed seabed soil sample collected by a box sampler in a certain area of the South China Sea, the physical and mechanical parameters of soil moisture content, composition, shear strength and compressive modulus in this area were measured by indoor geotechnical instruments. An elastoplastic soil numerical model similar to that of undisturbed soil was established, and by designing different types of track plate, a coupled numerical model of track plate-soil sinkage interaction was obtained. Based on the CEL numerical method, the numerical simulation of the track plate sinkage under different sinkage speed, loading rate, track plate shape and track plate grouser structure parameters was carried out. The influence of different parameters on the sinkage of the track plate and the dynamic response of the soil.
With the increasingly poor terrestrial mineral resources and the continuous exploration of the ocean by human beings, the rich mineral resources of the seabed are becoming the new focus of competition among major economies in the world (Dai, 2010). Due to the harsh environment in the deep-sea, the exploitation of resources must rely on underwater robots for deep-sea operations. Since a large amount of minerals needs to be mined at one time, and the crawling type has higher stability than the floating type, the deep-sea mining vehicles with deep diving depth, wide range of motion, strong operation ability and crawling has become the core equipment for the development of deep-sea minerals and other seabed resources (Leng, et al.2021).
