Nieuw dwarsprofiel voor het Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal

Abstract

New Profile for the Amsterdam-Rhinecanal The aim of this thesis is to design a new profile for the Amsterdam-Rhine canal. The new profile needs to be well navigable and requires to have stable bank constructions. Simultaneously several social aspects have to be taken into consideration. The assignment is summarized as follows: Design a new profile of the Amsterdam-Rhine canal with a stable bank protection that takes future developments, durability and recreation into consideration. The history of the Amsterdam-Rhine canal shows that the draft of the vessels that use this canal has increased from 3.30 to 4.00 meters. This four-metre draft has been permitted since 1988 and was based on the dimensions of the push tow units. In the late 90s of the past century, a new generation of inland vessels made its appearance. Around 2002 problems to the bank constructions due to erosion were detected for the first time, possibly caused by the new generation inland vessels. The number of bigger inland vessels, particularly those in the VIa category has strongly increased over the past years together with the engine power and cargo capacity of many vessels (increase in scale). A representative canal section of the Amsterdam-Rhine canal, just north of Breukelen, has been chosen as research site. At this location erosion ranges from 0.20 to 1.70 meters within 15 meters distance of the sheet piles. The possible cause of this erosion has been further investigated in this report. Also research has been done to determine the governing hydraulic load, which is generated by governing vessels overtaking another vessel. The governing situation is defined as follows: a Rijnmaxship (135x17x4.00 m) overtaking a four barge push-towing vessel (198x22.8x4.00 m). In this situation, the return current is governing compared to a situation when loads from the main and bow thrusters are considered. The return current has been calculated with the 1D model DIPRO. DIPRO has also been used to validate the 2D model in Delft3D, to further elaborate the return current in the 2D model. The 2D model in Delft3D has been used to determine the maximum return currents around the two governing vessels. These values have been translated to the bottom of the canal by calculating the erosion. From these results can be concluded that canal profile (2) has twice the amount of erosion compared to canal profile (3). In this report canal profile (3) is recommended as the new normative canal profile for the Amsterdam-Rhine canal. Canal profile (3) is a combination of a box profile with a sloped upper bank and bottom, with in the middle a waterdepth of 7.60 meter. The depth in front of the sheet pile is 6.00 meter. The wet cross section is 751 m2. The bank construction consists of a sheet pile with a slope. The outcome of this thesis is a design for a new representative canal profile in the Amsterdam-Rhine canal. The normative hydraulic load (return current) causes minimum erosion to the canal bottom, which keeps the bank construction stable. Next to this the design proves that environmental and recreational purposes can be well combined in coherence with social developments.