Numerical Modeling of Excavation Process in Dredging Engineering

Abstract

The increase of world population has been requiring more and more lands for human activities, which is why the world dredging market has been significantly growing up during the past 20 years. In dredging engineering, underwater excavation process is one of the major procedures which involves complicated physics, no matter it is sand, clay or rock on the seabed. It is important to reasonably estimate the cutting force needed on the excavator blade, which will help to improve the design and reduce the wear of the equipment so that higher working efficiency can be achieved. However, it is known that the cutting force is greatly influenced by the local water pressure especially in deep water. The fluid flow will change the pore pressure distribution and meanwhile apply certain force to the solid particles. Since the experiments to measure the cutting force are expensive, a numerical model is then needed to describe the physics in it. In this paper, the author tends to use the discrete element modeling to describe the solid particle movement and particle-particle interactions, and the finite volume method to calculate the fluid pressure distribution and flow velocity. Besides, a coupling deck is used between the two models to exchange the information to describe the fluid-solid interaction. This research has proven the feasibility of applying such a method in the underwater excavation process. Further calibration and validation are still necessary depends on the soil properties of the seabed.