Countdown to the CEDA Dredging Days 2017

Audience at CEDA Dredging Days 2015 (Credit: CEDA 2015)

One week from now, the CEDA Dredging Days 2017 will be held in Rotterdam1. This is THE event for the dredging industry to share the latest developments on a technical level. So far I’ve attended every single Dredging Days since 1993. None of them have been a disappointment. There is always something new to discover. Either a presentation with a novel development, or new people to meet or old acquaintances that share a new story on the latest work.

As this is the place to be for discoveries in dredging, I will start of my first serious posts with this event. It is for you to discover whether my personal interests will be exciting enough to read. I do hope you will be fascinated enough, that I may serve you as your personal reporter on site.

There are a lot of exciting items on the program and I can’t cover them all, but most interesting to me are:

  1. Technical visit to the Prinses Beatrix Lock expansion project2
  2. The presentation of the Checklist for Successful Dredging Management3
  3. Presentation Klaas Slager, A novel approach to determine dredge pump NPSHr in field conditions
  4. Presentation Ewout van Duursen, New approach of a double walled pump house
  5. Young CEDA Pitch Talk by Ben Sloof, CFD in hopper loading calculations
  6. Damen Booth at the Dredging Exhibition4

Each of them have a personal interest to me, one way or the other. As there is a lot to discuss about these items, I will cover them in their own posts over the course of the next weeks. Maybe interspersed with reports of noteworthy events as they happen.

So, I hope to see you on the CEDA Dredging Days, I will be at the Damen booth #15 on the Dredging Exhibition. Or you can come back and read my reports here.

Receiving a visitor at the Dredging Exhibition 2015 (Credit: CEDA 2015)

References

  1. CEDA Dredging Days 2017
  2. Technical visit
  3. Checklist for Successful Dredging Management
  4. Damen Booth at the Dredging Exhibition

See also

Discover Familiar Grounds in Dredging

Panorama of 17th century Utrecht by Joost Droochsloot
Utrecht, Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, via Wikimedia Commons

Did you ever visit your home town? How many of you have been living in the same place, without even going to the local attractions that are advertised to lure tourists to your own city? I know I didn’t. I was brought up in a beautiful medieval city and never went into the city center to gaze at all the beautiful things that are there. Years later, I visited my city during a conference and we had a guided tour there in our program. That afternoon I discovered my own hometown again.
As our local expert in the dredging division, I took my colleagues on tours through the wonderful world of dredging. Most of them already well seasoned in dredging engineering, but sometimes unaware of hidden treasures of special knowledge that make dredges really work or how elegant some dredging solutions are executed. Helping them discover those details really helped them relate to the particular problem they were working on.
There are several ways to guide people through the intricacies of geophysics, fluid dynamics, and material sciences that are all part of dredging knowledge. I have been giving internal courses, writing academic papers, lectures. But also a lot of knowledge transfer happens in working groups, committees and at the coffee machine. I know even have a dredging experience center at my disposal to demonstrate those special phenomena hands on.

Overview of the Damen Dredging Experience
Overview of the Damen Dredging Experience

As our company expanded and we were also cooperating more with other divisions, the number of people that can be reached by these roads is limited. I started a journal of my discoveries through dredging, but this was not working well enough. Hence we were contemplating extending my reach by using the internet. So, my employer persuaded me to share my personal professional experiences with a wider audience. Both accessible to my colleagues and our customers alike.
Cue this website. This will be a platform to show you parts of dredging knowledge that you might be familiar with, but will be interesting to be discovered in a new perspective. You will find here explanations on geophysics, fluid dynamics and material sciences. But also hidden features of common dredging equipment. And some perspective on historical episodes, current events and future trends. Maybe even some personal touches or my own opinion.
I hope you will enjoy my stories and share them with anybody who has the same passion for dredging like you and me.

Kind regards,
Mark Winkelman

Mark Winkelman with VAMOS MV
Mark Winkelman posing with ¡VAMOS! Mining Vehicle