: The principal objective of this paper was to evaluate the steering characteristics of a tandem tracked vehicle, each side of which features two tandem tracks, when crawling on extremely cohesive soft soil. The tandem tracked vehicle is assumed to be a rigid-body with 6-dof. The dynamic analysis program of the tandem tracked vehicle was developed via Newmark's method and the incremental-iterative method. A terra-mechanics model of extremely cohesive soft soil was implemented according to the relationships of normal pressure to sinkage, of shear resistance to shear displacement, and of dynamic sinkage to shear displacement. In order to simplify the characteristics of contact interaction between track segments and cohesive soft soil, the characteristics of soil are equated to the properties of intact soil. In an effort to evaluate the steering characteristics of a tandem tracked vehicle crawling on extremely cohesive soft soil, a series of dynamic simulations were conducted for a tandem tracked vehicle model with respect to the front and rear steering angle, the steering ratio, and the initial velocity.

: This paper presents data from performance tests carried out to assess a manganese nodule crusher. Manganese nodules should be crushed into smaller pieces in order to assure the slurry flow of the lifting system. Both artificial nodules and real manganese nodules are used to evaluate nodule breaking ability of the crusher. The crushing performance of the crusher depends on the flow rate and pressure of the power transmission device. The size of the crushed manganese nodules also depends on the shape of the crushing drum. In this paper, several comparative tests are carried out to evaluate and improve the crushing performance and find the optimal design point of the crusher.

: This paper focuses on the dynamic responses of a tracked vehicle crawling on extremely cohesive soft soil, each side of which is composed of two parallel tracks. The tracked vehicle consisted of 2 bodies. One body is the tracked vehicle body, which is assumed to be a rigid body with 6 DOFs. The other body is the buoy body. The two bodies are connected by a revolute joint. In order to evaluate the travelling performance of a 7 DOFs vehicle, a dynamic analysis program for the tracked vehicle was developed using Newmark's method and the incremental-iterative method. The effects of road wheels on the track and soil are not taken into account. A terra-mechanics model of extremely cohesive soft soil is implemented in form of relationships: normal pressure to sinkage, shear resistance to shear displacement, and dynamic sinkage to shear displacement. Pressure-sinkage relationship and shear displacement-stress relationship should represent the non-linear characteristics of extremely soft soil. Especially, since the shear resistance of soft soil is very sensitive to shear displacement, spatial distribution of shear displacement occurring at the contact area of the tracks should be calculated precisely. The proposed program is developed in FORTRAN.

We analyzed binary landslide data from the Boeun area with logistic regression. Since the number of landslide occurrences is only 9 out of 5000 observations, this can be regarded as a rare event data. The main issue of logistic regression with the rare event data is a serious bias problem in regression coefficient estimates. Two bias correction methods were proposed before and we quantitatively compared them via simulation. Firth (1993)'s approach outperformed and provided the most stable results for analyzing the rare-event binary data.

: This paper focuses on the efficient arrangement plan of buoyancy modules, which plan is used to secure the safe operation and structural stability of a marine riser. The marine riser is connected between a vessel and seabed devices. The movement of the vessel and the seabed devices are affected by the motion of the riser. The riser of a deep-seabed integrated mining system exerts a strong influence on the healthy transfer of minerals. So, buoyancy modules must be equipped to compensate for the problem which is the structure stability and the dynamic motion. Installation locations and quantities of the buoyancy modules are determined by real sea experiments. But this is not easy to do because in real sea experimental conditions the cost is expensive as well as being, time-consuming and dangerous. Therefore, the locations and quantities should be determined by numerical simulation. This method is called simulation-based design. The dynamic analysis models of the riser and the buoyancy modules are built into the commercial software of DAFUL.