Norfolk Dredge Incline Experiment

DLBA’s Director of Workboats, Jonathan Soja, led DLBA’s largest incline experiment to date in March, 2021 in tandem with Norfolk Dredging Company. The experiment was performed to determine the vessel weight and center of gravity for U.S. Coast Guard stability calculations, load line calculations, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Naval Architecture Analyses of the lifting equipment.  This experiment was conducted on the 40 CY Clamshell Dredge named “Baltimore” which is 200’ long and 80’ wide and has a displacement of 4,400 kips. Crofton Industries provided the floating crane necessary to move the weights including a steel stack weighing 98 kips and two water tanks at 61 kips each. After 7 hours, the experiment was complete and successful.