• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.222-228
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• 2008

We conducted a dynamic analysis of an underwater test collector, which operates on extremely soft soil of deep-seafloor. The underwater test collector consists of nodule pick-up device, vehicle tracks, nodule crusher, loading frame and electric-electronic system. The weight of underwater test collector is about 8600 kg. The average normal pressure, that the underwater test collector supports, is about 6.0 kPa. The dynamic analysis model of underwater test collector is developed using commercial software RecurDyn-LM and Visual Fortran 90. A terramechanics model of extremely soft soil is implemented to the software based on user-written subroutine and applied to the dynamic analysis of the underwater test collector model. The dynamic responses of test collector are studied with respect to track velocities, terrain conditions, and coefficients of added mass and drag.