Proceedings of The Sixth (2005) ISOPE Ocean Mining Symposium Changsha, Hunan, China, October 913, 2005 Copyright

2005 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers ISBN 1-880653-656

Dynamic Analysis on 3-D Motions of Deep-ocean Mining Pipe System for 1000-m Sea Trial
Gang Wang, Shaojun Liu
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Central South University Changsha, Hunan, China

ABSTRACT
Based on the poly-metallic nodule deep-ocean mining system of COMRAs 1000-m sea trial, a FEM model of pipe system is built with ANSYS, which consists of steel lifting pipe, pump, buffer station and flexible hose. The modeling methods for 1000-m pipe system introduced in this paper are convenient to simulate the various 3-D motions of integrated mining system. Some essential characteristic and transient behaviors of pipe system are investigated and evaluated by simulation, including: (1) Pipe systems launch and retrieval behaviors; (2) The configuration of pipe system in deep-ocean, putting emphasis on the flexible hose with concentrated buoyancy; (3) Several towing motions of track-keeping operation. A comparable trial model with similar characters in towing tank is used to verify the accuracy of the results of the FEM model.

coupled static as well as dynamic behavior of 6,000-m-long pipe and attachments are found in Chung, 1994 and later series of publications. Chinese sea trial system has its special configuration: the flexible hose with the length up to 400 m connects the buffer and miner, and some buoyancy balls bound together to providing concentrated buoyancy are attached with the flexible hose at two points to make the hose form a saddle shape near the seafloor (Liu and Wang, 2003). This special configuration of flexible hose is considered not only to compensate the small height changing relative to the seafloor, but also to make the reaction force of the miner less. And this configuration has some special dynamic performances of advantage and disadvantage, and the behaviors of 3-D motions of this pipe system are uncertain to some extent, especially in the course of launching. To investigate the basic characteristics of this special configuration and evaluate the transient behaviors of the integrated miming system, the FEM model of the pipe system is built by ANSYS. Some modeling methods and results discussion of the simulation of the pipe system are given in this paper. Meanwhile, the accuracy of the FEM model simulation is verified by a trial model in towing tank.

KEY WORDS: deep-ocean mining; sea trial; coupled motion; pipe

system; finite element method; simulation

INTRODUCTION
After the lake test of 130-m water depth in 2001, COMRA (China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association) plans to carry out a sea trial in 1000-m ocean. The constitution of mining system for COMRAs 1000-m sea trial (Liu and Wang, 2003) is similar to other deep-ocean mining systems and integrated control of the ship-pipebuffer-flexible hose and self-propelling miner, one of which was tested in 1976 and 1978 in the North Pacific Ocean (Brink and Chung, 1981; Chung, 1994; Cheng and Chung, 1996; Chung, 1999), which consists of a self-propelled seafloor miner, a flexible hose, a buffer station, lifting pipe and pump, and a surface ship. Some research groups had developed the software for the position-control and dynamic simulation of the integrated ship-pipe-buffer-miner system (Brink and Chung, 1980; Chung, Whitney and Loden, 1980). Moreover, Chung and Felippa had presented the FEM modeling and solution techniques of nonlinear static analysis of deep ocean mining pipe and given some numerical studies for an 18,000-ft pipe modeled by 3-D beam finite elements which include coupled axial, bending and torsional deformations (Felippa and Chung, 1981; Chung and Felippa, 1981). Further FEM modeling and numerical analyses of 3-D nonlinear

FEM MODEL OF PIPE SYSTEM

Modeling Methods The element PIPE59 in ANSYS is used to simulate the pipe system, which is uniaxial element with tension, compression, torsion, and bending capabilities, and with member forces simulating waves and current. The element PIPE59 is based on Timoshenko beam theory. And the elements have six degrees of freedom at each node: translations in the nodal x, y, and z directions and rotations about the nodal x, y, and z axes. The FEM model of the lifting pipe system consists of steel pipe, pump, buffer station, and flexible hose. In FEM model, the flexible hose is divided to 400 elements (1 element per meter); the steel pipe is divided to 156 elements (2 elements per pipe); the pump is divided to an element; and so does the buffer station. The element division of pipe system is shown in Table1. In the global coordinate system as shown in Fig.1, the direction of water depth is parallel to the global z-axis, and

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