Estimating sediment erosion of a centrifugal dredge pump’s impeller

Sediment erosion is a phenomenon of mechanical wear of components that decreases efficiency and uptime of the dredging process. Dredge pumps are designed to handle mixtures of water and solid particles with varying particle size from less than 0.002 mm to greater than 200 mm. A dredge pump’s overall effectivity in the field depends upon its uptime. Uptime is influenced by the number of times the pumping process is interrupted, which can be due to maintenance combating the material loss, clogging, etc. This research deals with the erosion phenomena by considering a framework of numerical models, capable of qualitative and quantitative erosion estimation, coupled with experiments for validation. Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM) is used for surface roughness measurement before and after the experiment, thus depicting the material loss due to erosion.

Submissions for IADC’s Safety Awards 2022

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 the 2022 Safety Awards, IADC’s Safety Committee received 11 submissions. Each one is assessed on five different categories; sustainability; level of impact on the industry; simplicity in use; effectiveness; and level of innovation.

Interview: Marsha Cohen – Editor-in-chief for quarter of a century

As IADC celebrates 50 years of its quarterly journal, it seemed only fitting to speak to its longest standing editor, Marsha Cohen, who stood at the helm of Terra et Aqua for 25 years. We caught up with her at her home in Florida to talk about the highs, the lows and a good dose of serendipity.

Building a proactive safety culture within a marine contractor organisation

It is hard to imagine a time when safety was not deemed important, when Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was not used and little was done in the way of prevention. A few decades ago, occupational health and safety was not considered as important for the vast majority of companies. Instead, incidents and emergencies were handled as they occurred, as effectively as possible given the limited technology and resources available. Today, those times have changed. This article explores the progress of health and safety in the dredging industry and QHSSE professionals, Ton van de Minkelis and Christophe Leroy share their experiences in building a proactive safety culture.

Shaping the engineers of tomorrow

During his distinguished career as professor of Coastal Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Kees d’Angremond served as head of Hydraulic and Offshore Engineering, chair of the department of Hydraulic and Geotechnical Engineering, and dean of the faculty of Civil Engineering from 1989 to 2001. Now professor emeritus, he still works as an advisor and independent consultant. We invited Kees to a conversation with Stefan Aarninkhof, professor of Coastal Engineering and chair of the department of Hydraulic Engineering at TU Delft, to talk about their careers in the dredging industry and the role of academia in the industry today.