Wild Dragon® draghead

The Wild Dragon® is an example of how far IHC Merwede is going for the solution of problems of their customers: the Chinese owner of an IHC Merwede-built TSHD was confronted with extraordinary compacted clayish fine sand banks (D₅₀=60 to 100μm) in the Yangtze estuary that hitherto only could be dredged with CSDs. However, the crowded traffic in the estuary practically prohibited the use of stationary dredgers. A first attempt to do the job with the TSHD revealed that the suction head bounced and the word ‘dredging’ was to redefine in ‘pumping turbid water’.

As soon as the customer had communicated the problem, experts from IHC Parts & Services, IHC Dredgers and MTI Holland teamed up with the owner’s experts. In a creative and iterative process, accompanied by extensive scale tests, a succession of draghead concepts was developed.

This R&D project is beneficial until today and has even got more importance, given our current efforts to be a sustainable supplier. Not alone in densely packed sand, but also in easier soil types, the Wild Dragon – which, of course, also has a Chinese registered name: Wei Long® – bites deeper and causes less resistance than any other trailer head. Consequently, the TSHD production increases at lower fuel consumption, emissions and cost. The entire process runs more smoothly and component wear is slowed down. Due to the increased mixture density, the settling in the hopper is quicker, overflow losses and turbidity diminish. It is a screen page of the vessel’s integrated monitoring and control system, showing on the left side the cross needle production indicator of the suction tube, equipped with the Wild Dragon® and at right the production indicator of the suction tube with the normal suction head. As can be seen, the latter is mainly pumping watery sludge at high speed, the Wild Dragon® is making production for sure.