Docking and Mooring: Design, Groundwork, and Dredging Essentials

Continuation Works: Berthing and Mooring

Design Parameters in Dock Works:

• Direction: Related to winds and currents in the area.
• Draft: Necessary consideration in low-water situations, the vessel's draft, and allowable agitation charge.
• Coronation: The elevation of the dock.
• Efforts: To be considered when calculating the spring's resistance: hydrostatic drive, effort and wave agitation, interstitial pressures in the extrados of the spring, efforts at the berth by the throw of ropes and fenders.

Groundwork for Docking:

• Land and compacts: Good and rocky, incompressible.
• Lots of low compressibility: Loose sand or gravel suitable for the construction of gravity docks.
• Heterogeneous Land: Different layers with alternative materials and sometimes changing materials.
• Soft Ground: Clay slurry is typically excluded due to no resilience and frequent material changes.

Dredging:

The excavation, loading, and transportation of solid materials that are on or deposited on the seabed, river, or in areas covered by water. Special machinery called train dredging or dredge is required.

Types of Dredging:

• Dredging for First Establishment: Run only once.
• Dredging for Improvement: Increasing the draft obtained in a first establishment work.
• Dredging for Conservation or Maintenance: Addressed to restore the necessary draft to a work.

Dredging by Execution Technique:

• By Mechanical Means: Excavation is done by mechanical means.
• By Suction: Suction extraction of the material is through a carriage.

Dredging by Location:

In the open sea, docks or sheltered areas, rivers, canals, and bars.

Factors Conditioning Dredging:

• Weather Conditions: Maritime climates can impede the work.
• Physical Conditions: Nature of the materials to extract, volume, depth, accessibility, distance from spill area.
• Equipment Technical Constraints: Availability of machinery.

Types of Dredges:

• Mechanical: Act on the material cut.
• Suction: Drag the water with the material.
• Hydraulic: Suction generated by a pump.
• Pneumatic: Suction generated by pumping air.
• Submerged Equipment: Some are completely caterpillar type.