At this year’s PIANC APAC 2022 Conference in Melbourne, in2Dredging will present its extended abstract, entitled “Rock Dredging”. We look forward to meeting our coastal and maritime industry colleagues in person, hopefully without any significant COVID restrictions.
With the abstract, our goal was to describe rock dredging in a nutshell with an interesting narrative. Although it was a challenge to summarise such a complex topic, the extended abstract covers the main topics and provides easy-to-read basics for our colleagues.
The paper also gives some key rock parameters as well as economic and physical limitations for dredgers. By presenting insights into fundamental rock mechanics, readers can gain a rock-solid understanding of dredging equipment limitations.
Due to the inherent limitations of dredgers and the typical uncertainty of rock conditions, it is wise to have a backup option such as drilling and blasting. This option becomes more cost-effective when both rock strength and rock mass fractures exceed economic and physical limitations. Although this backup option requires a lot of preparation and proper lead time, it can be done.
