Optimized Turning Basin Design for Inland Waterways

Abstract

Concept design guidelines for ship turning basins can often not be met in practice due to environmental, economic or geotechnical restrictions. In those cases, a detailed design procedure is followed to develop an optimized turning basin geometry within the environmental constraints. Real-time ship manoeuvring simulations are then used to evaluate the manoeuvres in the proposed geometry. However, such a detailed design procedure is costly, especially if a large number of simulations in required. In order to restrict the number of simulations, the waterway authority Voies navigables de France (VNF) ordered a study to find a generic and optimal design for a turning basin which could be suitable for the upgrade of the northern part of their inland waterway network. To this end, turning manoeuvres of two typical inland navigation vessels were simulated in real time in different hydro-meteorological conditions. The study was conducted in three stages. In a first stage, the manoeuvres in traditional circular and trapezoidal turning basins of different sizes were executed and analysed. In a second stage, optimized turning basin geometries were developed and the turning manoeuvres in those optimized geometries were then analysed in a third stage. Based on the results of the analysis, a stepwise approach is proposed to select an optimized turning basin geometry according to the conditions present on site. It is considered that this stepwise approach for designing turning basins reduces the amount of real time simulations that are required when upgrading a waterway network.