Why Dredgers Are Called Editors of the Earth Surface？

Whether it is the world's longest sea-crossing bridge, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the world's largest estuary improvement project, the Yangtze River Estuary Deep Water Channel Improvement Project, or the world's widest submarine-immersed tube tunnel, the Shenzhong Passage Island Tunnel Project, it is inseparable. The figure of the "steel giant ship" dredger So, what is a dredger? What magical powers does it have?

A boat that can "eat" sand

As a major weapon of a big country, dredgers play an important role in channel dredging and cargo trade, urban infrastructure construction, energy development and utilization, coastal protection, tourism development, farmland water conservation, disaster prevention, and national defense construction. It also has a function, which is to build islands from the sea, so it is called "the editor of the earth's surface."

Dredgers serve the water transportation infrastructure industry, and their role is equivalent to excavators in land infrastructure. Especially in China, where the water system is developed and the sea area is vast, dredgers have shown their talents in a series of super projects, such as: Tianjin Port, the world's highest-level artificial deep-water port, and Shanghai Yangshan, the world's largest automated wharf Hong Kong Phase IV, etc.

There are many types of dredgers, and the most widely used ones are trailing suction dredgers and cutter suction dredgers.

Among them, the working principle of the trailing suction dredger is similar to that of a household vacuum cleaner, and the sediment on the seabed is continuously sucked up by a centrifugal pump. The "Xinhaihu" ship, built in June 2007, is a trailing suction dredger. This is the first time that China has realized the design and construction of a large trailing suction dredger by itself.

The working principle of another type of cutter suction dredger is to use the reamer to twist the sediment on the seabed, "loosen the soil," and then "eat" the sediment into the "belly—the mud cabin. The Tiankun dredger, which was successfully launched in November 2017, is a cutter suction dredger. It was the dredger with the largest installed power, the strongest dredging capacity, and the world's largest long-distance transportation capacity in China at that time.

"The prosperity of the country begins with dredging" and dredgers can always be associated with people's lives. In March 2021, the heavy cargo ship Changci ran aground on the new channel of the Suez Canal in Egypt, causing a blockage of the channel and seriously affecting global trade. Later, the Suez Canal Authority invited the strongest foreign aid—dredgers—to help widen the waterway of the Suez Canal.

Made in China

The design and construction of Chinese dredgers are more than 100 years later than those of European and American countries. They started with imitation in the 1960s, developed independently in the 1970s and 1980s, developed rapidly in the 1990s, and independently innovated in the 21st century, all while relying on the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, and other countries. From the import of the whole ship, to the digestion and absorption of technology, to the introduction of ship design and domestic construction of key equipment, and then to the self-design and construction of modern dredgers, a leapfrog development has been completed. made a major breakthrough. In 2019, "Independent R&D and Industrialization of Large Offshore Cutter Suction Dredging Equipment" won the special prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, which proves that China's dredger technology is already at the international leading level.