Towards Sustainable Dredging and Navigation: Integrating Maintenance Strategies with Digital Twins for Inland Waterway Transport
Impact of Flocculation on Sediment Transport, Rheology and Bed Properties
3. June 2026 | 13.15 h - 14.45 h
Das Wasserbauseminar ist eine gemeinsame Veranstaltung der Abteilungen Wasserbau und Gewässermorphologie, Hydrologie und Flussgebietsmanagement, Abfall- und Ressourcenwirtschaft und Hydromechanik, Küsteningenieurwesen und Seebau. Das Wasserbauseminar findet im jeweils mittwochs von 13:15 bis 14:45 Uhr statt. Die Vorträge werden im Regelfall in Präsenz (BI 84.2) und in Ausnahmefällen digital (über die Lehrplattform Stud.IP) stattfinden.
Auch externe Interessierte haben die Möglichkeit, sich die Vorträge des Wasserbauseminars als Gasthörer*innen anzuhören. Die Anmeldung hierzu ist semesterweise im März/April sowie im September/Oktober möglich.
Dr. Alex Kirichek: Towards Sustainable Dredging and Navigation: Integrating Maintenance Strategies with Digital Twins for Inland Waterway Transport
Waterborne transport is critical to the global economy, supplying about 80% of global trade volumes and consuming less energy per unit of cargo compared to road, air and railway transport. Under the EU commitment to climate neutrality by 2050, transitioning the maritime sector to zero-emission operation has become a key but complex systemic challenge that requires an integrated approach linking multiple systems, domains and spatial and temporal scales. A digital twin can provide such a frame work by integrating hydrodynamics, port and waterway infrastructure, fleet dynamics and logistics. In the short term, it can support operational optimisation and retrofit or fuel-switch strategies for emissions-intensive operations (e.g., maintenance dredging, which can account for more than 50% of emissions in EU ports). Over the longer term, it can enable coordinated new infrastructure planning, resilience analysis, logistics optimisation and fleet transition modelling to support the zero-emission transition of the maritime sector while strengthening climate resilience.
Dr. Claire Chassagne: Impact of Flocculation on Sediment Transport, Rheology and Bed Properties
Flocculation is the mechanism whereby suspended particles aggregate to each other. Drivers for flocculation are organic matter, salinity, pH and shear rate. Sediment transport is heavily impacted by flocculation, as flocculation changes the settling rates of the suspended material. It also changes the rheology and consolidation of the fluid mud layers found at the bottom of navigation channels. In this presentation, experimental and theoretical work will be presented. It will be shown how laboratory experiments can be used to parameterized models whereby flocculation plays a role, and which types of in-situ monitoring are conducted to validate the models.
Lecturer
Dr. Alex Kirichek und Dr. Claire Chassagne, Hydraulic Engineering-TU Delft