| Abstract: | The sinkage of a moving tracked mining vehicle is greatly af fected 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 dif ferent speeds is calculated using the Recur Dyn 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 Recur Dyn software can be used to study the performance and structural optimization of moving tracked mining vehicles. |
