Editorial

Abstract

Dredging plays a vital role in most coastal engineering works, port developments and other large projects related to infrastructure. In response to our call for papers we received many excellent submissions on dredging; indeed more than required to fill a single issue. The first tranche of these is presented here, but given the level of response and the clear level of interest in the subject from our readership, we will be publishing more of these papers interspersed with other topics over the coming issues.The largest proportion of the world population lives in relatively small strips along coastlines, often located around or even below mean sea level. Dredging and dredging equipment play an important role in contributing to the protection of these areas, where works for coastal protection are needed. Furthermore, the growing world population and increase in average living standards results in increasing demand for goods, minerals and energy. This demand increases the throughput of ports, demands larger and deeper-drafted vessels, and has also resulted in developments in the offshore oil and gas industry, seeing production shifting to deeper water. Dredging has a critical role in helping to support this growth, and advances in technologies and processes are continually sought.The dredging industry is still using empirical equations to predict the pressure losses of slurry transport. These equations (Durand and Condolios, 1952; Fü hrbö ter, 1961;Wilson et al., 1992) contain a limited number of parameters and are based on experiments in small-diameter pipelines. Extrapolation to real life, large pipe diameters gives different results for the different equations. In our first paper, Miedema (2014) describes a novel approach based on energy loss results in a semi-empirical equation, and using dimensional analysis, thus having a more fundamental background and containing more parameters. This new approach matches the equations of Durand and Condolios, Fü hrbö ter and Wilson et al. for small pipe diameters, but with a better extrapolation for large pipe diameters. Here, the new approach is compared with the Fü hrbö ter equation giving a good match and enabling the user to see the influence of the different parameters (some not present in the original Fü hrbö ter equation).