Damen redesigns dredger for Chinese project

The Jie Long, which was originally built as a plain suction dredger, required extensive refurbishment to allow the vessel to dredge at -50m. Damen visited the dredger to assess its condition and outfitting, designed, engineered the components and supervised the outfitting process.

The company designed new customised ladder hinge points for the front pontoons and a new ladder arrangement. It also include a submerged dredge pump and a cutter unit.

The adapted dredger will be used to create a tunnel for the Macau-Hong Kong-Zhu Hai transport link. The dredger’s cutter unit can be replaced by a dustpan head which will be used to clean the tunnel track just before the tunnel elements are positioned.

The Jie Long has been equipped with a constant tension system on its winches and Damen Navguard software to determine and keep its position. The contract also included other Damen dredging instrumentation including dredge pump vacuum and pressure indication and flow density measurement of the dredged mixture.

The redesigned dredger recently passed its dredging test and is now ready for use on the transport project which is due for completion by 2016.