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NUMERICAL METHODS FOR MODELING THE ROCK CUTTING PROCESS IN DEEP SEA
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 Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering
DRAFT
NUMERICAL METHODS FOR MODELING THE ROCK CUTTING PROCESS IN DEEP
SEA MINING
Xiuhan Chen1
Offshore & Dredging Engineering
Delft University of Technology
Delft, The Netherlands
Cees van Rhee3
Offshore & Dredging Engineering
Delft University of Technology
Delft, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
The increasing demand on precious metals has motivated
the development of a promising industry, deep sea mining.
Currently major technical challenges exist in the development
of this new industry, such as the vertical transportation, the
seabed excavation process and the stability of the riser system.
This paper will focus on the excavation process on the seabed.
Considering the fact that the deep sea mining excavation
process may occur at 3000 meters water depth, the hyperbaric
pressure applied by the sea water will greatly influence the
cutting process. Especially when the cutting speed of the cutter
is very high, the so called “dilatancy hardening effect” (Brace
and Martin, 1968) may make the seabed rock very difficult to
excavate. These factors will make the rock excavation in deep
sea much different from shallow water, which is the case in a
___________________________________________________
1. PhD Candidate, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2,
2628CD Delft, The Netherlands, x.chen-1@tudelft.nl.
2. Associate Professor of Dredging Engineering & Educational
Director of Offshore and Dredging Engineering, Delft University of
Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628CD Delft, The Netherlands,
s.a.miedema@tudelft.nl.
3. Full Professor of Dredging Engineering, Delft University of
Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands,
c.vanrhee@tudelft.nl.
OMAE2014
July 8-13, 2014, San Francisco, California, USA
OMAE2014-23094
Sape A. Miedema2
Offshore & Dredging Engineering
Delft University of Technology
Delft, The Netherlands
normal dredging project. In this paper, the physics of the
hyperbaric excavation process will first be described into detail.
Because the hyperbaric rock cutting experiments are
expensive, it is more feasible to make a numerical model to
simulate the process. The main difficulties are to model the
breaking of rock and the interaction between the rock and the
pore water. Considering the scale of the problem and the
characteristics of the material, it is concluded that the discrete
element method (DEM) will be the best tool to simulate the
rock behavior. On the other hand, to describe the influence
from the hyperbaric pressure which is induced by the sea water,
governing equations are derived and the finite volume method
(FVM) is chosen to solve the equations. This paper will give a
detailed description about the numerical method regarding this
specific problem and show some preliminary tests on clay
cutting process.
INTRODUCTION
Industries like dredging engineering, offshore drilling
engineering and etc. need a detailed description of the
underwater rock cutting process. Especially in recent years, the
increasing demand on precious metals has motivated the
development of a promising industry, deep sea mining.
Currently major technical challenges exist in the development
of this new industry, in which the underwater rock cutting
1 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
process is one of the dominant difficulties. Thus it is necessary
to conduct a detailed investigation into this topic.
Underwater rock cutting process is different from dry rock
cutting due to the influence of water, which consists of three
issues: 1) the confining pressure which equals to the hydrostatic
pressure; 2) the fluid flow in the cutting area; 3) the pore
pressure inside the pores of the seabed. It has been indicated by
Miedema (2012) that rock which fails in a brittle mode in dry
environment may fail in a ductile mode in underwater
environment. On the other hand, Kuiper (2013) has done
experimental study on the relation between the ambient
pressure and the apparent material strength of fully saturated
rock, where he pointed out that at great water depths it is more
energy efficient to use a grab which excavates with slow strain
rates than to use the rotating excavator. However, since the
conventional rotating excavator can deliver a higher production
rate, it is still necessary to figure out the cutting process with a
high cutting speed. In this paper, the physics of the underwater
excavation process will be discussed first.
Considering the fact it is very expensive to do the
experiment of hyperbaric rock cutting with a controlled high
loading rate, it is determined that a numerical model should be
developed to simulate the process. A good numerical model
will help to predict the needed cutting force and thus improve
the design of the cutting tool. Since such a process is so
complicated which involves the solid-solid interaction, the
solid-fluid interaction, the fluid-solid interaction and the fluid-
fluid interaction, therefore we need to be very careful to make
the choice from all the existing numerical methods for solving
the problem. Comparisons between different numerical
methods will be given, too. Starting from the results of the
previous researchers, a new numerical method consisting of a
set of equations will be introduced in this paper.
The last chapter of the paper will illustrate the preliminary
results of the simulations based on underwater excavation
process of cohesive soil, which is also a major composition of
the seabed. It is shown that the CFD-DEM coupling can well
describe the behavior of fluid flow and solid particles. Further
validation is still needed for this kind of simulations.
THEORY OF THE UNDERWATER ROCK CUTTING
PROCESS
Rock is a relatively hard material. The unconfined
compressive strength (UCS) varies from 20MPa of sandstone to
250MPa of granite. The cohesive force between the grains is so
high that it becomes the major resistance against the excavator.
In the normal dredging projects, the water depths are
around 10~30m, which means the hydrostatic pressures are
around 1~3bar. Since the UCS of the rock is in the range of
200~2500bar, the hydrostatic pressure won’t give a significant
influence to the cutting force. However, this is not the case in
deep sea mining engineering. According to Ahnert and
Borowski (2000), ocean mining sites are usually around large
areas of poly-metallic nodules or active and extinct
hydrothermal vents at about 1400~3700m below the ocean’s
surface. That means the hydrostatic pressure could be up to
370bar, which is quite comparable to the UCS of the common
rock material, for example sandstone. Therefore the assumption
Phydro << UCS doesn’t hold anymore. But how will it influence
the cutting process then?
Now let us start a cutting process, when a blade is cutting
into the virgin rock, cracks and fractures will be developed
from the blade into the rock. If the cutting speed is very low,
then the surrounding seawater is able to flow into the cracks
until the pressure inside the crack gets equal to the hydrostatic
pressure outside of the crack. In this way the huge hydrostatic
pressure above the seabed will not contribute much to the rock
resistance. However, what is usually seen in dredging project is
that the cutting speed is very high to achieve a good production
rate. The propagation speed is around 0.4~1m/s and the speed
on the tip of the blade could be up to 5m/s. With such high
cutting speeds, the seawater does not have enough time to fill in
the crack, so the pressure in the crack will drop dramatically.
Then all of a sudden the pressure difference between inside the
crack and outside of the rock gets so big that the hydrostatic
pressure becomes an enormous confining pressure. As
mentioned before, in deep sea mining project, the hydrostatic
pressure could be around 300bar, adding to the strength of the
rock itself, would make it very difficult for the blade to open
the crack and thus lift up the chip.
On the other hand, the sea floor soil itself is porous. The
seabed rock makes no exception. So apart from the cracks and
fractures developed by the blade, there are already a lot of
pores or fractures inside the virgin rock. Since the seabed rock
has been saturated in the seawater for very long time, it is
expected that all the pores are totally saturated, which means
the pore pressure is equal to the hydrostatic pressure. When the
external load is small, only the shape of the pores will be
distorted, the volume of the pores can still stay the same. But in
dredging or deep sea mining practice, the purpose is to destroy
the rock structure, so the external load must be big enough to
break the bonds between rock grains. Thus the internal structure
of rock is damaged and the pores’ volume could decrease or
increase. If the pore volume decreases, the local pore pressure
will go up and the pore water will flow out. On the other hand,
if the pore volume increases, the local pore pressure will drop,
attracting the surrounding water to flow in. However, as
mentioned before, due to the high cutting speed in reality, the
local strain rate is so high that the in and out flows through the
pores are hardly allowed, therefore again a big pressure
difference forms up between inside and outside of the rock.
Now it is known that in the “fast” cutting process, both the
cracks developed by the blade and the pores/fractures originally
in the rock can give birth to water under pressure. With this
under pressure, a great confining pressure forms up for the
cutting process. According to Vlasblom (2007), rock behaves
brittle in atmospheric condition may behave ductile in high
confining pressure condition, as shown in Figure 1.
2 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
 Figure 1. Rock failure with different confining pressures
(Vlasblom, 2007)
To distinguish between the “fast”, “intermediate” and
“slow” processes, van Kesteren (1995) has derived the pore-
Peclet number ξpe:
𝑉ℎ𝑠 𝑉ℎ𝑠 [𝐶𝑓 − 𝛼𝐶𝑠 + 𝑛(𝐶𝑤 − 𝐶𝑠 )]𝛾𝑤
𝜉𝑝𝑒 = = (1)
𝐷 𝑘
Where V is the cutting speed [m/s], hs is the cutting depth
[m], D is the diffusion coefficient of porewater pressure [m2/s],
k is the hydraulic conductivity [m/s], γw is the fluid density
[N/m3], Cw is the compressibility of the porewater [m2/N], Cs is
the compressibility of the solids [m2/N], Cf is the
compressibility of the fabric [m2/N], n is the porosity and α is
the solid compression coefficient.
Based on the pore-Peclet number, he gives out two limit
conditions:
 Drained condition, which is the “slow” process, will occur
when ξpe < 1. In this condition, porewater flow due to
porewater pressure gradient is possible without affecting
the behavior of the porous system itself.
 Undrained condition, which is the “fast” process, will
occur when ξpe >10. In this condition, porewater is not
allowed to flow through the pores, and pore water
pressures will affect the stress state in the rock fabric.
The dilatancy hardening effect (Brace and Martin, 1968)
due to drainage conditions has been witnessed in the
experiments of Duda and Renner (2013), who have applied
different strain rates to three types of sandstones (Ruhr,
Wilkeson and Fontainebleau). They discovered that the onset of
dilatancy hardening representing the critical condition for
drainage actually occurred at strain rates within an order of
magnitude of critical strain rates calculated from the
determined hydraulic properties. Besides, the transition from
brittle failure mode to ductile failure mode under external
hydrostatic pressure has been observed by Kaitkay and Lei
(2005), who conducted the experiments of cutting Carthage
marble using the polycrystalline diamond compacts (PDC)
cutter. They found that the increase in the forces from cutting
under no pressure to cutting under 500psi (3.44MPa) is
accompanied by an increase in chip length as clearly seen in
Figure 2.
(a) No confining pressure (b) At 3.44MPa hydrostatic
pressure
Figure 2. Chips from machining tests of Kaitkay and Lei (2005)
NUMERICAL METHODS FOR ROCK CUTTING
PROCESS
To calculate the cutting force on the cutter, some analytical
models have been developed in the past. Merchant (1945)
developed a model for cutting elastic-plastic material and
assumed the failure only occurs in shear. However, Evans
(1966) suggested a model on the basis of the observations on
coal breakage by wedges, where the cutting force is calculated
purely based on tensile failure. Later, Nishimatsu (1972)
presented his theory by introducing the stress distribution factor
into the calculation of the stress on the failure plane. Recently,
Miedema (2010) has combined all the previous analytical
models and taken the underwater environment into
consideration to generate a more comprehensive model, where
he calculated the cutting forces based on three different cutting
regimes: the “flow” type, the “tear” type and the “curling” type.
As shown in Figure 3.
The pore pressure distribution in the cutting zone must be
used as input parameters to calculate the cutting force using
Miedema´s model. But to get the pore pressure distribution, the
local porosity must be known first (Miedema, 2004). This
model is based on a 2D macroscopic perspective, so it cannot
describe the internal irregularity and disorder of the rock
skeleton, thus the porosity change during the cutting process
cannot be calculated by this model. Another important fact is
that the underwater rock cutting process is so complicated that
different mechanisms tend to happen simultaneously instead of
separately. It has been pointed out by van Kesteren (1995) that
during the indentation of the cutter tooth, a crushed zone will
first form up around the tip of the cutter due to the compaction
from the cutter. And then at the boundary of the crushed zone
the forces are transmitted to the intact rock as discrete point
loads, so shear cracks will be developed into the virgin rock.
Finally at a certain distance from the free surface the shear
cracks can bifurcate into tensile cracks and then chips can be
formed up. So as shown in Figure 4, the compressive failure,
shear failure and tensile failure modes may occur together, and
according to Verhoef (1997), probably up to 90% of the energy
for cutting is spent in the crushed zone where many rock
fragments are located. Therefore although many analytical
models based on simplified assumptions have already been
3 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
developed, a more detailed and accurate numerical method to
describe the rock cutting process is still wanted.
Figure 3. Three regimes of underwater rock cutting process
defined by Miedema (2009, 2012)
Chip
Figure 4. Failure modes during underwater rock cutting.
(Vlasblom, 2007)
Several numerical methods are available to simulate solid
materials and monitor the stress state, for example the finite
element method (FEM). However, FEM has major difficulty to
simulate the growing of cracks, so it is not very suitable for
modeling rock cutting process. Actually, a rock is made up of
small grains of varied shapes and sizes held together at grain
boundaries (Kaitkay and Lei, 2005). Based on this
characteristic, discrete element modeling (DEM) is quite
suitable to simulate rock-like materials. DEM is a family of
numerical methods for computing the motion of a large number
of small particles. It was first introduced by Cundall (1971) for
the analysis of rock-mechanics problems and then applied to
soils by Cundall and Strack (1979). Later, Huang (1999) did 2D
rock indentation and cutting simulations with a large number of
circular disks using the commercial software PFC2D. She
established the scaling laws between the phenomenological
parameters of a material and the properties of a discrete disc
assembly. Later, Potyondy and Cundall (2004) have
summarized the previous rock-like material modeling
techniques and generated the bonded particle model (BPM)
which consists of both a grain contact portion and a cement
contact portion. They suggested that the cement behavior
between rock grains can be expressed by either a parallel bond
model or a contact bond model. Simulations of biaxial and
triaxial tests were done with the software PFC2D and PFC3D.
On the other side, to prepare the initial state of the rock sample,
Bagi (2005) suggested an algorithm named ¨the Inwards
Packing Method¨ to generate random and dense 2D
arrangements for DEM simulations, which is proven to be
faster than the normal dynamic methods. Recently, Scholtès
and Donzé (2012) applied a modified constitutive law into the
contact model to describe the rock grains interaction and an
enhanced joint contact logic to represent the pre-existing
fractures in the rock. Rojek et al. (2013) proposed a 2D virgin
stress installation method in which an inverse displacement
method is firstly used to generate stress-free particle assemblies
configuration and then the kinematic loading and stress
relaxation are employed to reach the expected virgin stress
conditions.
So now it is acknowledged that DEM is capable of
simulating the mechanical behavior of rock-like material. The
grain contact model and cement contact model suggested by
Potyondy and Cundall (2004) are more intrinsic and also closer
to the real physics in rock cutting process. The macro
mechanical properties will spontaneously emerge from the
contact models, while the other models are more dependent on
the specially defined constitutive laws. Another issue should be
addressed is that the mechanical properties of the seabed rock
in major deep sea mining sites are similar to sandstone, so the
chance of very big pre-existing fault planes is relatively low,
thus the model of Potyondy and Cundall (2004) should be
sufficient and can be applied.
However, it should be noticed that by so far the most
successful simulations are done in 2D. When it comes to 3D,
the link between micro input and macro output becomes very
weak and uncontrollable. And the most important point is that
4 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
none of these codes are able to capture the pore pressure
evolution in a fully saturated environment with a very big
hydrostatic pressure. Therefore we need an algorithm to deal
with DEM and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at the
same time.
Shimizu (2011) proposed a rock-fluid interaction algorithm
based on a 2D channel-domain network for simulating the
hydraulic fracturing process. As shown in Figure 5, the fluid
flows are described as pipe flows which only exist around the
contact point between two DEM particles and pore pressure
values are saved at the center of the domains which are also
surrounded by the DEM particles. The simulation results show
a good agreement with experimental results. However, the
deformation of solid skeleton in hydraulic fracturing is much
smaller than that in excavation process. The whole channel-
domain network will be gone when big deformation happens in
excavation process. Besides it is very difficult to upgrade this
method into 3D world, thus it is not suitable for simulating the
solid-fluid interaction in underwater excavation process.
Figure 5. Left: Channel-Domain model; Right: Fluid flow in a
channel. (Shimizu et al. 2011)
Since the permeability of the seabed rock is low, the fluid
flow through the pores could be treated as Darcy flow. Besides,
the cutting speed in deep sea mining is high and the hydrostatic
pressure is very big, then the fluid cannot be treated to be
incompressible any more. From the consolidation theory of
Verruijt and Broere (2011), a storage equation based on mass
conservation of both the solid and fluid phases is given.
𝜕𝑝 𝜕𝜀𝑣𝑜𝑙
−𝑛𝛽 − = 𝛻⃗ ∙ 𝑞 (2)
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑡
Where 𝜀𝑣𝑜𝑙 is the volumetric strain of the solid skeleton, t
is the time [s], n is the porosity, β is the compressibility of the
fluid [m2/N], p is the fluid pressure [pa] and 𝑞 is the specific
discharge [m/s] which is calculated by
𝑞 = 𝑛( − ⃗⃗ ) (3)
Where is the fluid velocity [m/s] and ⃗⃗ is the solid
velocity [m/s]. From Eq. 2 it is clearly seen that the local fluid
flow is induced by: 1) the compressibility of the fluid 2) the
volumetric strain rate. These two characteristics match the
underwater excavation process very well. In addition, the
derivation of the consolidation theory is based on the finite
volume method (FVM), which is the most generic and mature
method in CFD. Then it would be very nice to couple DEM and
FVM together for solving the underwater excavation process.
Such an Eulerian-Lagrangian coupling is designed in the
following way:
 From solid to fluid: DEM will transfer the information
about the change of the solid skeleton to FVM, such as
DEM particles’ velocities and the local porosities. But
DEM particles do not apply force to fluid, since the solid
skeleton itself is the major resistance against the fluid flow.
 From fluid to solid: FVM will use the information from
DEM to update the fluid pressure and velocity field based
on mass and momentum conservation equations. And
correspondingly the fluid driven forces will be applied
back to DEM particles, such as the pressure gradient force,
the viscous force and the drag force.
The fluid mass conservation is shown in Eq. 2. Actually
the volumetric strain rate can be represented by
𝜕𝜀𝑣𝑜𝑙
= 𝛻⃗ ∙ ⃗⃗ (4)
𝜕𝑡
So bring Eq. 3 and Eq. 4 into Eq. 2, it is obtained
𝜕𝑝
𝛻⃗ ∙ [( − 𝑛) ⃗⃗ ] + 𝛻⃗ ∙ (𝑛 ) + 𝑛𝛽 = (5)
𝜕𝑡
According to Verruijt and Broere (2011),
𝜕𝑛
𝛻⃗ ∙ [( − 𝑛) ⃗⃗ ] = (6)
𝜕𝑡
So the fluid mass conservation can be written as:
𝜕𝑛 𝜕𝑝
+ 𝛻⃗ ∙ (𝑛 ) + 𝑛𝛽 = (7)
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑡
It should be noticed that Eq. 5 doesn’t have the time
derivative term of porosity as Eq. 7, instead it uses the solid
particle velocity. From the perspective of mathematics and
physics, these two equations are saying exactly the same thing.
But in application, it is possible that they can generate slightly
difference. For the current stage, Eq. 7 is recommended
because it is easier to implement.
As mentioned before, the fluid flow through the pores is
treated as Darcy flow. But after a big chip is lifted up by the
blade, the crack area is fully opened, and then the Darcy flow
assumption doesn’t hold anymore. Since the biggest cutting
force may not appear during the excavation of the first chip, it
is still needed to continue the calculation for generating the
second, the third or more chips until the maximum cutting force
5 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
emerges. In addition, those mineral particles produced during
the excavation can move upwards into the open water.
Considering the fact these materials might be toxic, they can
pollute the seawater and threat the safety of the sea animals. So
it becomes really necessary to obtain the whole fluid velocity
and pressure field, not just the part where Darcy flow exists,
only then it is possible to describe the physics continuously
both in space and time, and to know how high the excavated
materials can float into the seawater.
In the momentum equation of the fluid, the set I equation
of Zhou et al. (2010) is taken and modified. A source term
based on Darcy’s law is added to represent the resistance due to
the low permeability of the solid structure. Besides, since the
length scale of the simulation zone is much smaller than the
water depth (e.g. 3000m), gravitational acceleration is
neglected in the fluid phase. In addition, the compressibility of
water is very small ( 𝛽 𝑝 ) and in mass
conservation this factor has already been considered, so in the
momentum equation the fluid density is treated as constant. The
equation is given below, where ρ is the fluid density [kg/m3], ̿
is the viscous shear stress tensor [N/m2], μ is the dynamic
viscosity of the fluid [kg/(m·s)] and κ is the permeability of the
solid structure [m2].
𝜕(𝑛 )
+ 𝛻⃗ ∙ (𝑛 ) = −𝛻⃗𝑝 + 𝛻⃗ ∙ ̿ − ( − ⃗⃗ ) (8)
𝜕𝑡
The most important forces applied on the solid particles
from the fluid side are the pressure gradient force and the
viscous force. These two are the components due to
‘macroscopic’ variations in the fluid stress tensor on a large
scale compared with the particle spacing (Zhou et al. 2010).
While the other forces which arise from the detailed variations
in the stress tensor induced by fluctuations, such as the drag
force, the virtual mass force and the lift force are optional
choices. Pressure gradient force ⃗⃗⃗𝑝 and viscous force ⃗⃗⃗̿ are
calculated in the following way in which Vparticle is the volume
of a solid particle [m3]:
⃗⃗⃗𝑝 = −⃗ 𝑝 ∙ 𝑉𝑝 𝑙𝑒 (9)
⃗⃗⃗̿ = −⃗ ∙ ̿ ∙ 𝑉𝑝 𝑙𝑒 (10)
In Eq. 8, the last term on the right hand side is deduced
from Darcy´s law. Inside the rock, the permeability is quite low,
and then this source term will create a huge resistance to the
fluid flow. On the contrary, when calculating the flow in open
water, the permeability becomes infinite, and then the value of
this source term will be zero, the equation is thus reduced to the
Navier-Stokes equation. In this way both the “dense” and
“dilute” regimes can be described in the same equation. As long
as it is solved in an implicit manner, such a ¨jump¨ of
permeability between the dense and dilute phases will not
create any trouble in the calculation. Therefore now the
question is how we can calculate the permeability.
Based on the information from the DEM side, local
porosity values can be obtained. Then a relation similar to
Kozeny-Carman Equation can be applied to calculate the
permeability. As shown in Eq. 11, Dp is the diameter of the
related spherical particle [m], Φs is the sphericity of the grains
in the packed bed. In DEM simulations, the shape of the
particles is sphere. But in reality, the rock grains are not
spherical. Since the purpose is to simulate the behavior of rock,
so this Φs remains to be a calibration parameter.
Φ𝑠2 𝐷𝑝2 𝑛3
= (11)
8 ( − 𝑛)2
Such a computation based on the coupling between DEM
and FVM is expected to be very expensive, so it would be
much better if parallel computation can be employed. Goniva et
al. (2010) developed a coupled CFD-DEM framework named
CFDEM which combine the strengths of the DEM software
package LIGGGHTS (LAMMPS improved for general granular
and granular heat transfer simulations) and the CFD software
package OpenFOAM® (Open Field Operation and
Manipulation). CFDEM runs fully parallel on distributed-
memory clusters. They are capable of simulating the physical
processes in both 2D and 3D domains. Another advantage is
that CFDEM, LIGGGHTS and OpenFOAM® are all free and
open source software packages whose codes can be modified
according to users´ needs. Therefore it is decided that the
numerical method proposed in this paper for modeling the rock
cutting process in deep sea mining will be conducted using
the ¨CFDEM + LIGGGHTS + OpenFOAM®¨ software package.
PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM SIMULATIONS OF
CLAY CUTTING PROCESS
This research is a long term project, currently the
numerical methods and functionalities (e.g. the parallel bond
model) described in the previous chapter have not been
completely implemented into CFDEM yet. However, some
preliminary results for testing the coupling ability of the
software package can already be shown. In this chapter,
simulations of clay cutting process in both dry and underwater
conditions are described and compared.
Clay is cohesive soil. The cohesive stress between clay
grains ranges from 10 to 800kPa. Here the cohesive stress
applied to the DEM clay sample is set to 100kPa and the
adhesive stress between clay and the blade cutter is set to 66kPa
using the SJKR (simplified Johnson-Kendall-Roberts) model
(Jonson et al. 1971). The diameters of the generated DEM
particles follow Gaussian distribution with the mean value
0.4mm and the standard deviation 0.1mm. The basic contact
model used is Hertz model, in which the internal and external
friction angles are 300 and 200 respectively. As shown in Figure
6 and 7, the size of the clay sample is
110mm 11.8mm 10.2mm and the size of the blade is
12.8mm×11.6mm×0.2mm. The horizontal cutting speed is
200mm/s and the cutting angle is 51.50. For the underwater clay
6 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
cutting simulation, a hydrostatic pressure of 300kPa is applied,
which is three times of the cohesive strength between the clay
grains.
Figure 6. Clay sample used for the cutting simulation
Figure 7. Blade cutter used for the cutting simulation
Here below Figure 8 is a snapshot captured from the clay
cutting simulation in the dry environment at the time 0.25s. In
the graph, the color of the particles indicates their velocity.
Particles’ velocities increase when the color changes from green
to red.
Figure 8. Snapshot captured in dry clay cutting at 0.25s
During the cutting process under constant cutting speed,
there will be a moment when the particles have piled highly
enough in front of the blade, and some particles start to fall
down to the back of the blade. After that special moment, the
cutting process enters into the steady state and the cutting force
on the blade will be relatively constant. In sand cutting process,
sand particles will fall down freely from the height which is just
above the top of the blade, as shown in Figure 9, which is from
the sand cutting simulation of Chen (2013).
Figure 9. Dry sand cutting simulation (Chen et al. 2013)
But in clay cutting, the cohesion between clay grains will
help to build up an extra layer above the top of the blade. And
the clay particles will not drop freely as sand particles, instead
they tend to drop down as a column of continuum. These
characteristics are well captured in the clay cutting simulation.
As shown below in Figure 10.
Figure 10. Snapshot captured in dry clay cutting simulation
From Figure 8 the performance of the dry clay cutting is
known, since the purpose of these simulations is to test the
coupling between DEM and FVM, then it is more important to
check the simulation result of underwater clay cutting test. Here
below Figure 11 is the snapshot of the underwater clay cutting
simulation at 0.25s.
Figure 11. Snapshot captured in underwater clay cutting at
0.25s
Apparent difference exists between Figure 8 and 11. The
maximum particle velocity in dry condition is 0.455m/s while
on the other hand that is 0.267m/s in underwater condition. The
reason behind that is that the interaction between the fluid and
solid particles has dissipated a big portion of the kinetic energy
of the solid particles. To compare the two performances in a
better way, the dry clay cutting and the underwater clay cutting
simulations are superposed in the same figure. In Figure 12, the
red region represents the dry clay cutting and the yellow region
represents the underwater clay cutting.
7 Copyright © 2014 by ASME

(a) time = 0.25s
(b) time = 0.3s
Figure 12. Snapshots captured in clay cutting simulations of
both dry and underwater conditions
It has been pointed out by Abdeli (2010) that in underwater
soil cutting, due to the confining effect of hydrostatic pressure,
the shape of the shear layer built in front of the blade will be
much different from that of dry cutting, as shown in Figure 13.
Such difference has been well described in Figure 12. In the dry
clay cutting (red), the shear layer in front of the blade is wider
and its profile is more like a smooth curve. On the contrary, in
the underwater clay cutting (yellow), the shear layer in front of
the blade is much thinner and its slope is much steeper, which
makes it more rectangular. Besides, in the underwater condition,
the build-up layer above the top of the blade can reach a larger
height. These behaviors well illustrated the confining effect of
the fluid.
In addition, the tail in the underwater cutting (yellow) can
reach further behind the blade than in the dry cutting (red). The
reason for that is the dropping velocity of the particles in
vertical direction is significantly damped by the fluid, e.g. the
viscous force, so horizontally these particles have more time to
move further behind the blade before they reach the bed. And
of course as mentioned before, the tail in the underwater cutting
starts from a higher position.
Figure 13: The shape difference between the dry soil cutting
and water saturated soil cutting (Abdeli, 2010)
The cutting forces on the blade are calculated in both
conditions. Figure 14 are the force registrations from both the
dry cutting and underwater cutting simulations, in which the
red line indicates the underwater condition while the blue line
indicates the dry condition.
(a) Normal force on the blade
(b) Shear force on the blade
Figure 14: Cutting force records on the blade
The final cutting forces in the steady state in both
conditions are more or less the same, no matter it is in the
normal or shear direction. However, in underwater clay cutting
process (red line), a big “jump” in both the normal and shear
direction is witnessed in the beginning stage of the test. This is
induced by the dilatancy stress (Rowe, 1962). In the beginning
of the cutting process, the clay sample is densely compacted.
Due to the push of the blade, the solid skeleton will become
loose, so inside the pores the pressure will drop, then a pressure
difference between in and outside the pores will build up which
makes the clay bed much harder to excavate. Later, since the
cutting speed is low (0.2m/s), so the surrounding water can fill
into the pores in the clay. Then the pressure difference is gone,
the cutting force will correspondingly decrease. After that,
since the clay sample is already much looser than the initial
situation, so further dilatancy hardening effect has not been
observed.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
A numerical method including a set of equations is
established in order to describe the underwater rock cutting
process, especially to calculate the fluid pressure distribution
and the cutting force. These equations and functionalities need
to be implemented into “CFDEM+LIGGGHTS+OpenFOAM”
software packages, which is a coupling system between DEM
and FVM.
Although further validation and calibration are needed, it is
convinced that the “CFDEM + LIGGGHTS + OpenFOAM”
coupling system is able to make the cooperation between fluid
(FVM) and solid (DEM) based on the momentum exchange
concept which is currently used in the software system.
Mechanical characteristics are captured well in the preliminary
tests of the clay cutting simulations in both dry and underwater
environments.
8 Copyright © 2014 by ASME
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