WIDENING OF DURBAN HARBOUR - CONCRETE ELEMENTS

Report Back

Phil Smith from Prestedge Retief Dresner Wijnberg Consulting Engineers presented a very interesting overview of their project involving the widening of Durban harbour.

The primary objective of the project is to provide the Port of Durban with a new entrance channel which allows for the safe access of all vessels up to an equivalent of a container ship measuring Length - 350m; beam width - 45.6m and draft - 14.5m, under most weather conditions

The design of the new entrance required consideration of a number of functional and port operational requirements. The primary functional requirements included navigational safety for vessels using the channel and a high degree of availability for all vessels up to, and including, the design ship. These requirements were to be met without inducing additional sedimentation of the channel, minimising the adverse impact of increased wave energy on the adjacent Bluff and Point berths, and maintained within the available land, utility and environmental constraints. In addition, the design was required to allow shipping traffic into the port during construction on a 24-hour basis, without undue congestion.

The main design components for the project included:

• Channel dimensions of the new entrance channel
• New north groyne
• Reinforcement of the south breakwater
• Revetment construction
• Dredging and demolition works 

It was very interesting having a look at the complexity of some of the challenges PRDW faced while performing the task at hand with a fully functioning port. It was actually quite amusing to see what came out of the habour during the dredging process - from graders to military war heads.

The feedback from our members on this project has been great, partly due to the fact that projects like this don’t come up every day.