Two previous PIANC reports have focused on navigation locks. The first, the ?Final Report of the International Commission for the Study of Locks?, was published in 1986 [PIANC,1986] and provided a very broad overview on different topics concerning the construction of locks. After twenty years it was necessary to provide an update to the older report and this resulted in the report ?Innovations in Navigation Lock Design?, which was published as report no 106 in 2009 [PIANC, 2009]. Afterwards it became obvious for people working in that field that the interaction between the lock and the moving vessel is not sufficiently covered by these two former reports. It is necessary to give designers of locks and organisations that operate locks more insight into the troubles that vessels might encounter when locks are operated and to provide guidance on how to avoid them. Thus, it was decided to set up a follow-up Working Group to fill this gap.
rnrnThe Terms of Reference for this group were defined to investigate and report on:
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- An overview of the current knowledge to evaluate the forces which act on a ship while entering a lock and during the locking process.rn
- Methodologies to assess the acceptable levels of these forces.rn
- Guidelines in different countries to handle the design process in order to achieve the desired level of safety.rn
rnThe developed aim of the WG was to give designers and operators an idea as to why the effects of locks on vessels are important and to combine this with the experience from cur-rent lock projects. So, the main questions to be answered were:rn
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- What are the relevant physical processes? rn
- Is there a way to evaluate the forces on the vessel?rn
- What is the vessels reaction and is it critical?rn
- What to do to prevent problems?rn
- Is there, or should there be, a code or guideline for this problem? rn
rnDuring the transit of a ship through a lock and even during normal navigation, ships can be significantly affected by the interaction with the processes induced by a lock. It is relevant to have an idea about the governing processes, as they have an impact both on design and operation of navigation locks.
rnrnThe report is structured from the point of view of the user of the infrastructure. It is based on a timeline of events for the vessel that transits through a lock, i.e. a series of chapters for normal navigation, waiting in front of the entrance, entering the lock, the locking process, and leaving the lock. Additionally, the WG tried to analyse the possible hazards of a lock transit by combining the experience of the members and talking to pilots and captains. This resulted in the narrative in the ?Foreword? of the report. Apart from this, the Working Group performed a Hazard and Operation (HAZOP) study. The purpose of this method is to identify all undesired exceptions of a system or process together with the related causes. The result is given in the annex of the report.
rnrnThe report of PIANC InCom WG 155 ?Ship Behaviour in Locks and Lock Approaches? supp-lements the prior reports ?Innovations in Navigation Lock Design? and ?Final Report of the International Commission for the Study of Locks?.rn
