Author Archives: Ria van Leeuwen

Van Oord’s award-winning reclamation pipe gasket redesign

Sometimes a small improvement can have a huge impact. Van Oord’s new reclamation pipe gasket design significantly reduces the risk of potential finger injuries with an easy to implement and cost-effective solution. The design was chosen as the winner of IADC’s Safety Award 2025.

Laboratory setup to study cutting forces of blunt chisels

Dredging of rock using a cutter head as found on a cutter suction dredger will become increasingly more important as drilling and blasting is often prohibited. Understanding the cutting process and resulting forces on the chisels can lead to improved design and operational efficiency. The majority of experimental and numerical work performed considers rock cutting with an unworn or sharp chisel, often omitting the normal force. This article presents the linear rock cutting setup developed by Royal IHC to study the effect of a worn or blunt chisel geometry on the cutting forces, with the emphasis on the normal force.

Blue carbon – an opportunity for the waterborne transport infrastructure sector

Many ports and harbours operate in and around marine coastal habitats,
such as tidal marshes, mangrove forests and seagrasses. Many of these
marine coastal habitats are considered blue carbon ecosystems, which
play a crucial role in capturing carbon. This article examines how waterborne
transport infrastructure impacts blue carbon ecosystems, reviews
current mitigation strategies and suggests integrated approaches for
sustainable coexistence. We emphasise the importance of collaboration
among marine transport authorities, environmental managers, scientists
and engineers to protect these essential carbon sinks while supporting
the sector’s economic contributions.

Submissions for the IADC Safety Award 2025

When individual employees, teams and companies view everyday processes and situations through a continuous lens of safety, they can each contribute to making all aspects of operational processes, whether on water or land, safer. For this year’s Safety Award, IADC’s Safety Committee received 14 submissions. Each one is assessed on five different categories; sustainability; level of impact on the industry; simplicity in use; effectiveness; and level of innovation.