Assessment of the Applicability of the PIANC Guidelines on Protecting Berthing Structures from Scour Caused by Ships

Assessment of the Applicability of the PIANC Guidelines on Protecting Berthing Structures from Scour Caused by Ships

Pasaoglu, M.

Verhagen, H.J. (mentor)
Verheij, H.J. (mentor)
Vellinga, T. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Hydraulic Engineering

Coastal Engineering (CoMEM)

2015-06-24

As the shipping industry is growing, more and more propulsion systems are being developed with better propulsion capabilities. These current and newly developing systems in ships are expected to cause scour at beds around berthing structures with greater likelihood than the systems preceding them, which increases the importance of protection methods used to deal with this issue. In early 2015, the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC) has published a report titled ‘Guidelines for Protecting Berthing Structures from Scour Caused by Ships’ with the aim of providing practical guidelines and detailed background information about vessel propulsion systems in order to allow designers to make a proper design of the bed protection in front of the berth structures or to estimate the scour expected to develop. However, the applicability of these guidelines to real scenarios remains to be assessed. The limitations and uncertainties associated with the guidelines have been determined by applying the aforementioned guidelines to the riprap type of bed protection design of both open and solid berthing structures in an inland mooring facility located in the Rotterdam harbour. In examining these guidelines, it was revealed that several assumptions are necessary due to lack of information on various parameters and some specifications of the design ship, along with shortcomings and limitations of the methods and equations presented. The significance of these assumptions on the applicability of the guidelines has been investigated. In cases where limitations have been found, owing to assumptions or otherwise, certain solutions can be offered to overcome these. The guidelines were found to be applicable and provide decent instructions for a proper bed protection design in spite of the requirement of some assumptions. The effectiveness of the guidelines can be improved thanks to further research with bed protection designs for different case study locations and various bed protection methods to verify the conclusions reached in this study. Moreover, supplementary resources like a catalogue containing detailed information about several ship characteristics with relatively higher influences in the design process can help designers to gather more accurate data to be used in the calculations.

PIANC
Thrusters
Propellers
Berthing Structures
Deterministic Design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:bee4e059-7cd8-4ef0-99f8-616104e44792

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Pasaoglu, M.