Delft University of Technology
Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering Transport Technology
M.S.H. Pennings Rollerbarge. Transporttechnische uitwerking van een nieuw overslagsysteem Masters thesis, Report 97.3.TT.4923, Transport Engineering and Logistics.
Container flows have been growing ever bigger last decade and still they are. In handling those flows new solutions are needed for the technical problems arising from the grow. A brand new approach in transportation is the Rollerbarge idea, a way of transporting fast and cheap on inland water.
In this concept barges are loaded horizontally in pre-stacked blocks. An onboard lifting mechanism takes care of vertical movement of the blocks into the ship.
First a block of two layers of containers is placed on rollers. After that the rolling blocks are stacked on the border of the quay until the barge arrives. A horizontally moveable platform mounted on the lifting mechanism of the ship gets positioned against the quay before a maximum of eight TEU is rolled onto the platform. Then the containers are lowered into the ship. A transport system in the ship moves the blocks to their stowing position.
For the rolling specially modified rollers, with a loading capacity of 20 tons each, are used. These rollers move on rails, driven by a chain system for long distance and a hydraulic push/pull cylinder for small translations. The lifting mechanism in the ship consists of hydraulically driven cylinders as well. The lifting cycle must be smaller man five minutes, so that a handling capacity of 192 TEU per hour is obtained when two lifting systems are applied. No exact cost calculations are published yet, however the economics of the Rollerbarge concept seems to be good in comparison to existing transportation systems. Time considerations result in pure profits then.
Reports on Transport Engineering and Logistics (in Dutch)
