Dynamics of bottom mine burial in soft sediments: experimental evidence and predictions

The paper presents results of 21 deployments of an instrumented, mine-like cylinder over soft cohesive sediment seafloor at two sites. The focus of this work is the sediment penetration phase. The paper gives a statistical description of the sediment penetration dynamics and compares the observed behavior with predictions from an impact burial software package. It is shown that, due to simplifications and assumptions adopted in the package, the predictions are only marginally acceptable in describing the experimentally observed motions, orientations and amount of burial. It is further shown that extending the currently two-dimensional formulation of the predictive software may not result in significant improvements of the overall predictions of impact burial. It is argued that such improvements may only be achieved through a more accurate constitutive model of the deforming sediment.