UXO clearing head
Many dredging projects are faced with the occurence of UXO's. In each of those cases, dragheads must be fitted with a UXO-grid that prevents the UXO's to enter the draghead. The aperture size of the grid will depend on the advice of the UXO-specialists. In most of the cases, this will be around 100*100 mm or less.
The use of such a grid has an important negative effect on the production that the TSHD can achieve. The production drop is always significant. In cohesive soils, production will be a fraction of what it would be without the use of a UXO-grid.
The UXO-grids stop the UXO's at the entrance of the draghead but eventually they get stuck in the grid. Removal of them is dangerous and time consuming.
The use of shaking grids have resulted in higher production and safer working on UXO-containing projects. But the production loss is still significant and safety stays an important issue.
With the existing technology, this means that projects containing UXO's are very expensive and hazardous.
To solve this, a concept of a UXO clearing head was made which will increase the production rate and safety of the crew drastically.