Experimental investigation on consolidation behavior of mud: Subreport 1. Methodology study

Due to the complex nature of mud consolidation within harbours, a robust and accurate guideline to evaluate the nautical depth is still under debate. Besides, alternative dredging techniques (e.g. mud conditioning/fluidising) have proven to be an applicable method to reduce dredging costs in a number of harbours. Yet, before one can define new criteria for nautical depth or implement new dredging techniques, a deeper understanding of the temporal evolution of rheological, mechanical and biological characteristics of mud is needed. In this study, we aim to improve the understanding of the rheological properties of consolidating mud by comparing the consolidation process of mud from 5 different locations namely the harbours of Zeebrugge (ZB) and Deurganckdok (DG) in Belgium, the harbours of Rotterdam (RO) and Ijmuiden (IJ) in the Netherlands and the Emden (EM) harbour in Germany. The main objectives of this project are to examine the effect of the consolidation process on the mechanical, rheological and biological characteristics of mud as well as to explain the differences in consolidation processes between muds from different origins.This sub-report describes the properties of different mud types used for the experiments as well as the experimental setup. The experimental setup includes a detailed description of the governing parameters, experimental design and measurement techniques conducted on two different consolidation columns, small and large