Bespoke solution for Dutch dredging project

The project required the company to remove a significant volume of clay but was hindered by the presence of piles in the water, so Damen Dredging Equipment developed a special cutterhead for the company, enabling it to meet a tight schedule.

The project is at Market Hall in the centre of Rotterdam, where a covered market with 228 apartments will be constructed. More importantly, the complex will include an underground four storey car park.

The contractor had to dig the site to the right depth, no easy job due to the presence of 2,500 piles. Moreover, the bottom of the excavation site was pure clay, which is notoriously difficult to dredge.

Damen Dredging Equipment found a solution by fitting out a standard DOP1515 with a specially adapted disk-knife cutter. The disk-knife cutter, which has long vertical blades, already existed yet was made to measure in this project using the input of the contractor.

The unit, fit for the confined spaces between the piles, was based on a hydraulically driven adaptor connected to the DOP1515. This was used to cut the clay in layers without causing any damage to the piles. The mixture was pumped to a nearby dewatering station. The DOP1515 was connected to a Martens en van Oord crane. The 65kW dredge pump and disk-knife cutting unit were both fitted to run on the crane’s hydraulic system. The maximum mixture capacity of the DOP1515 was 500 m3/h. It worked at a maximum dredging depth of 14m on a 200mm discharge pipeline.

Martens en van Oord owns a number of DOP pumps, two of which are working on the Market Hall project with a disk-knife cutter each.