Definition of dredge

Before entering fully into the meaning of the term dredge, we are going to proceed to know its etymological origin. In this case, we can point out that it is a word that derives from French, exactly from “drague”, which can be translated as “red”.

The verb dredge refers to the use of a dredge to achieve the cleaning and the deepening of a river, lake, canal, or other body of water. The dredger, for its part, is the machine that allows to develop this task when extracting rocks, sand and other materials and sediments.

When dredging, it is possible increase the depth of a waterway. In this way, navigation is facilitated, allowing large vessels to move without the risk of running aground. That is why these tasks are necessary in the ports: If it is intended to receive huge cruise ships, for example, it is likely that dredging will be required.

Dredging, on the other hand, gives greater carrying capacity Water to the road in question. This minimizes the possibility of flooding in surrounding areas.

There are different types of dredgers according to the characteristics of the land to dredge Some of these machines are installed in mainlandwhile others work from boats.

What is done when dredging is dig a material that is submerged, extracting it and bringing it to the surface. Is action This results in an increase in the depth of the body of water and a decrease in its level.

Between the mechanical dredgersthe excavator dredgersthe front loader shovel dredgersthe continuous hopper dredgers and the bucket dredgers. In the cluster of the suction dredgerson the other hand, we can find the running suction dredgersthe stationary suction dredgers and the cutter dredgers.

It is interesting to establish, in addition to everything indicated, that the dredger was a machine that was commissioned to design the great genius Leonardo da Vinci. Specifically, that one responded to the name of lagoon dredger and it was an excavator in charge of cleaning the bottom of certain channels.

Its operation and principle was similar to that of the dredgers that exist today and was based on the use of a series of buckets that acted one after the other and that while they were digging allowed the dirt and collected material to be stored in devices that responded to the name of storage floats.

Nowadays, a model of this type of contraption that responds to the name of the van veen dredger is well known. What this achieves is to obtain samples of superficial sediments in medium-hard or soft bottoms. Specifically, it is used very frequently both in biological studies and in others of a hydrological nature and even in those that fall within the environmental field.

Its appearance is that of two spoons that are connected through a hinge. Those are separate, but they come together to collect sediment samples.