A Study on the Efficient Flexible Multibody Dynamics Modeling of Deep Seabed Integrated Mining System with Subsystem Synthesis Method

A deep seabed integrated mining system consists of a mining vessel, a lifting pipe, a buffer station, a flexible pipe, and a mining robot for collecting manganese nodules. Recently, the concept of multiple mining robots was introduced to enhance to mining productivity. In this paper, the subsystem synthesis method was applied to the deep seabed integrated mining system in order to improve the efficiency of system analysis and to facilitate its extension to the system of multiple mining robots. Large deflections of the lifting and flexible pipe were considered by dividing a flexible pipe into several substructures, and applying flexible multibody dynamics to each substructure. Theoretical study has been carried out for the efficiency of the subsystem synthesis method for the integrated mining system, by comparing the arithmetic operational counts of the subsystem synthesis method with those of the conventional method.