tRHINEco - From Logistics Chain to Design Considerations for an Inland Container Vessel

MARIN participates in the tRHINEco project together with DST Duisburg, the University of Duisburg and the Radboud University Nijmegen. The project aims to stimulate a shift of continental cargo flows from the road to waterways on specific routes. One of these routes is the East-West corridor from the Rotterdam region to Berlin. This corridor is part of the TEN-T corridor North Sea – Baltic. MARIN started recently with the work package “ Ship Design” , focused on this route. Starting point is the transport of 45’ pallet-wide containers. The route can be divided in different parts, from West to East: the river Waal/Rhine from the Western part of The Netherlands up to Duisburg, about 175 km. The channels from Duisburg to Berlin suitable for coupled units of 185*11,45 m including two trajectories where the maximum length of a vessel is 110 m. These trajectories are the southern part of the Dortmund- Ems-Kanal, about 60 km, and the Havalkanal, west of Berlin, for about 10 km. In the “Ship Design” work package MARIN will focus on maximizing the container capacity and optimizing the hydrodynamic design of the coupled unit on this trajectory, taking into account different fairway conditions and the trajectories where the barge and the ship have to sail separated from each other. Ultimately the design will be assessed for the operation on the route Europort – Berlin. The approach of this assessment is described.