Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Translational and Rotational Motion Measurement of Spherical Particle in Hydraulic Collecting
Hong Xiong1, Yuxiang Chen1, Hui Cheng1, Hong Zhu1, Chunliang Yu1, Guodong Zheng1, Yiyang Xing1
1-Insitute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Sanya, Hainan, China

shaped nodules from undisturbed sediment samples under laboratory
conditions to determine the nodule-sediment adhesion focus. Yang et al.
(2003) qualitatively analyzed the influence of the main shape parametersof the collection head with nozzles on the hydraulic collection
performance through experiments, and pointed out that the distance
between the front and rear rows of nozzles, the height of the nozzle fromthe bottom and the diameter of the nozzle jet hole are the key shapeparameters.

ABSTRACTThe research on the motion of particles in fluid conveying is significant
for the mechanism study of hydraulic collecting process in deep-oceanmining. The experiments were conducted in a water tank to measure thetranslational and rotational motion of spherical particles by developing aspherical detector with a built-in a nine-axis attitude sensor. The threeaxis linear acceleration and angular velocity can be measured and storedby the detector. The attitude angle, defined as the spatial rotation of thedetector coordinate system relative to the laboratory coordinate systemand described via the Euler angle, is obtained with a Quaternion
algorithm and a Kalman filter. The method is validated with a 50 mm
diameter spherical object by three respective tests. Finally, the detector
is tested as a tracer particle in hydraulic collecting. Findings indicate thatthe method is capable of tracing the detailed behaviors of particle inhydraulic collecting.

However, details of the flow field and mechanism of particle motion
during the collecting process have rarely been discussed. Zhao et al.
(2018, 2021) established an empirical formula for the lifting force
required to collect particles through vertical tube suction. Numericalsimulations were carried out on the fixed single simulated nodule forhydraulic acquisition, and it was found that the vibration of the lifting
force was largely caused by the change of the wake vortex. Xiong et al.
(2018) numerically simulated the process of lifting simulated nodules
into vertical pipelines during hydraulic acquisition using a CFD-DEM
coupled model. Further, Zhao et al. (2018) collected several particles
simultaneously and visualized the characteristics of the suction flow field.
They considered that vortex formation strengthened the suction force.
Chen et al. (2020) studied the lift-off of a single particle from the bottom
in hydraulic collecting. They analyzed the influence of particle size,
bottom clearance, and particle density on the particle starting velocity
and flow field by particle image velocimetry.

KEY WORDS: solid-liquid two-phase flow; spherical detector;
hydraulically collecting; translational and rotational motion

INTRODUCTION
In the process of exploring and developing the ocean, human beings havefound that the seabed contains extremely rich metal mineral resources,oil, natural gas hydrate, etc., which can be of many types, huge reserves
and high grades, and have great prospects for development andutilization (Lusty, 2018). A deep sea mining system is an integrated unitof mining vessel-pipe-mining vehicle on seabed that picks up solidparticles or alluvial forms of solids, including heavy mineral particles,from the deep seabed and transports the solid particles to the sea surface.
The mineral particles are mostly spherical or ellipsoidal, with their longaxis length varying from 2 cm to 10 cm, and the hydraulic lifting process
is the large particle solid-liquid two-phase flow (Li, 2003). The
movement mechanism of particle-water mixture is the key to thehydraulic lifting technology.

Most of the above studies focused on the lift force, translational motion
and flow field analysis of the particles in hydraulic collecting. Particle
motions are commonly measured via digital images, laser speckle
patterns, X-ray, and the acoustic technology with different flaws (Yanget al., 2018). However, the measurement of the particle rotation has notgained much attention owing to a lack of appropriate measurement
methods.
Recently, a flow field measurement device based on MEMS sensors has
been proposed. Harada et al. (2011) developed a spherical device with adiameter of 30 mm for measuring fluid forces. However, its sampling
frequency is low, and the rotation angle of the particles in the fluid cannot
be measured. Cai et al. (2016) developed a micro-particle tracing sensor
to measure the motion information of a dense object in a fluidized bed.
Zhu et al. (2020) developed a spherical detector based on a nine-axis
motion sensor to measure the translational and rotational motion ofspherical particles in a three-dimensional conical hopper.

Sup Hong et al. (1999, 2001) conducted a hydraulic collection test in along tank using a collection head with nozzles, and found that thepressure distribution on the bottom of the tank and the shape of thecollection channel had an impact on the collection efficiency of nodules.
Bernd Grupe et al. (2001) obtained deep-sea sediment samples using asampling device and measured the traction force required to lift different

79