• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.319-322
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• 2006

The Deep-sea miner system is composed of body, actuators, sensors, and devices for control and monitoring. At present, we are manufacturing the miner's body included actuators and already consisted with off-the-shelf embedded controller. But sensors and those devices were just determined. To previously test performance of embedded controller which manages control and monitoring of miner system, its simulator must be developed for control and monitoring. Hardware-In-the-Loop(HIL) simulation is being increasingly used in industrial applications. This is an effective tool for the evaluation of electric system and drives. In the HIL simulator, we can test and design the control and monitoring system freely without the risk of hardware ruins and the load of expenses. Also the programming software for miner operating is verified on the HIL simulator. In this paper, we introduce the concept of HIL simulator for control and monitoring of deep-sea miner.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.41-46
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• 2012

A deep-sea manganese nodule miner consists of 4 parts: the pickup device, crusher, disposal device, and tracked vehicle. The tracked vehicle is an essential component to keep the self-propelled miner moving across deep-sea soil. The performances of the tracked vehicle are influenced by noise factors: the shear strength of the seafloor, bottom current, seafloor slope, track speed, reaction forces of flexible hose, etc. It is necessary to adopt a robust design method that improves the performances and minimizes the variation caused by noise factors. Taguchi's method, the most widely known robust design method, searches for the robust optimum using an orthogonal array composed of the product of the inner array and outer array. In this paper, we propose a new screening technique to reduce the number of input factors and apply the MRSN (Multi-Response Signal to Noise) ratio to convert multiple performances into single one in order to overcome the difficulties and limitations of using Taguchi's method in a case with many input factors and multiple performances. A test miner was already designed and tested. It has about 1/10 the capacity of a commercial one and was successfully operated at an in-shore area. Taguchi's robust design was applied to the tracked vehicle of the test miner, and design improvements were implemented for the vehicle.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.229-236
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• 2008

The deep-sea miner is the tracked vehicle system which drives on the deep-seabed and gathers a manganese nodules. The miner is operated by remote control in real-time by the station of surface vessel. So operating S/W is a important part of miner remote operating. At present, the test miner has been designed and manufactured for near-shore sea-test. The test miner consists of mechanical parts, and electric-electronic parts. Because those parts should be controled and monitored remotely, operating S/W for control and monitoring is necessary by all means. In this paper, real-time operating S/W for a control and monitoring of the test miner was designed and developed using PXI, embedded controller and LabVIEW. This real-time operating S/W was developed for an efficient test of test miner in a near seabed area. Moreover, database management system(DBMS) was developed too for the data management of test miner monitoring using MS SQL and LabVIEW.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.529-543
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• 2003

Deep-sea surface sediments, acquired from 1997 to 2002 in the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone of the northeast equatorial Pacific, were analyzed for index and geotechnical properties to provide background information for the design of manganese nodule minor. The sediments were classified into 16 types based on the measured properties and evaluated in terms of miner maneuverabillity and potential environmental impacts arising from mining activities. It was found that the middle part of the study area covered with coarse siliceous sediments is more favorable to the commercial production than the northern part of pelagic red clay. In particular, Area B2 in the middle part is considered the best mining site since it shows the highest abundance as well as it consists mostly of normally to over consolidated (types B, C, D) coarse siliceous sediments that are appropriate for effective minor movement and accompany weak environmental impacts. Taking account of all the analyzed core logs, the average shear-strength values are proposed as a practical guideline fur movements of a manganese nodule miner: 6.0 kPa at 10cm and 7.0kPa at 40cm below the seabed.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.367-371
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• 2014

In early 1990s, the Korean government has launched a deep-sea research program to secure the stable long-term supply of strategic metallic minerals including Cr, Cu and Ni. Through the pioneering surveys, Korea registered $150,000km^2$ of Mn-nodule field in the Clarion-Clipperton area, the NE equatorial Pacific to the international sea-bed authority (ISA) in 1994. Following the ISA exploration code, the final exclusive exploration area of $75,000km^2$ was assigned in 2002, based on results of eight-year researches of chemico-physical properties of nodules, bottom profiles and sediment properties. Since that time, environmental studies, mining technical developments including robot miner and lifting system and establishment of smelting systems were accompanied with the detailed geophysical studies to decipher the priori mining area until 2009. Major points of the recent Korea Mn-nodule program are deployed on a commercial scale until 2015. In order to meet the goals, we developed a 1/5 scaled robot miner compared to commercial one in 2012 and performed a mining test at the water depth of 1,370 m in 2013. In addition, detailed 25,000 scaled mining maps in the priori area, which can provide operation roots of the miner, will be prepared and an environmental-friendly mining strategy will be pursued based on the environmental impact test and environmental monitoring.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.463-473
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• 2010

Inshore tests were performed in order to verify the design concept of deep sea manganese nodule miner at a site near Hupo at East Sea of Korea in June of 2009. Total mining tests of the test miner, named 'Minero$^{(R)}$', together with flexible hose, lifting pump and lifting hose were accomplished. In this study, the performances of three subsystems of testminer (vehicle, pick-up device, and launch-and-recovery device) were analyzed for feasibility assessment of self-propelled remotely controlled miner, and also to compile basic data for designing a pilotminer. Performances of the test miner were defined based on the Functional Requirements of Axiomatic Design. The inshore tests revealed that the test miner generally satisfies the functional performances. Feasibility assessment and reflection on results are discussed within.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.246-251
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• 2008

The conceptual design evaluation of Deep-Sea Manganese Nodule Miner(DSNM) based on Axiomatic Design was preformed. Functional Requirements(FRs) in functional domain and Design Parameters(DPs) in physical domain were embodied for the given concept design of DSNM. Interactions between FRs and DPs were sequentially analyzed from the first level hierarchy to the lower level hierarchy. The interactions were expressed as design matrices which showed the dependence or independence between FRs and DPs. The results showed that the design of DSNM was not a coupled one, but a decoupled. Finally, it was conceptually verified that DSNM was a good design satisfying the independence axiom of the Axiomatic Design.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.32-38
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• 2009

An FMEA for the waterjet-lifter of a DSNM is performed to prevent the occurrence of device failure. A waterjet-lifter raises and transports manganese nodules from the deep-sea floor up to a somewhat elevated place, from which a pin-scraper transports the lifted nodules to the inner space of the DSNM. A concept design for a device using the axiomatic design methodology is shown as the mapping between the functional domain and physical domain. The FMEA for a DSNM is introduced briefly and the rating criteria of severity, occurrence, and detection for the DSNM are defined. The FMEA of the functional requirements of a DSNM device is accomplished. Three kinds of failure modes, as well as their effects and causes, are predicted. Current design control methods for detecting potential failures, such as physical or computational experiments, design confirmation, and mathematical calculation, are described and the recommended actions for several significant causes are suggested.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.252-259
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• 2008

The deep-sea mining system is generally composed of surface vessel, lifting system, buffer, flexible pipe and miner. The mining system can be regarded as a large-scale system in which each subsystem is interconnected to other ones. In order to control a large-scale system, decentralized control approaches have been proposed recently. In this paper, as a basic study on application of decentralized control, firstly, the mining system was modeled in a simplified way. Lifting system and buffer were regarded as a spherical pendulum and the flexible pipe was taken as a two-dimensional linear spring connection. Based on the simplified model dynamics, the mining system can be decentralized two subsystems, the one consisting of surface vessel, lifting system and buffer, and the other, the miner. Next, this paper proposed the design of controller for each decentralized subsystem by regarding the interacting terms as disturbances. The controllers kept the constant distance between two subsystems during the miner was moving on the specified track. Finally, the efficiency of proposed controller was proven through the numerical simulation of the derived model.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.487-494
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• 2014

Deep-seabed test miner operated by a self-propelled mining system moving on soft soil is an essential device to secure floating and towing performances. The performances of the tracked vehicle are seriously influenced by noise factors such as the shear strength of the seafloor, bottom current, seafloor slope, speed of tracked vehicle, reaction forces of flexible hose, steering ratio, etc. Due to uncertainties related to noise factors, the design of a deep-sea manganese nodules test miner that satisfies target reliabilities is difficult. Therefore, reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) is required to guarantee system reliability under circumstances where uncertainties related to noise factors prevail. Among noise factors, the bottom current, a bimodal distribution, is censored due to the observation limit of measurement devices. Therefore, estimated distribution of the bottom current is inaccurate without considering these characteristics and the result of RBDO cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, we define censored data as unknown values over the limit of observation. If this data is estimated by using Akaike information criterion (AIC) that cannot consider the characteristics of censored data, the distribution of estimated data cannot guarantee accurate reliability. Therefore, censored AIC that can consider the characteristics of data is used to estimate accurate distribution of the bottom current. Finally, RBDO, under circumstances where uncertainties related to noise factors combined censored data are present, is performed on the mobility of a deep-sea manganese nodules test miner.