PREFABRICATION IN HARBOUR CONSTRUCTION WORKS--WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CONDITIONS IN GREENLAND

Up to now most harbour works have been planned using prefabrication to a large extent but mostly with manufacturing of the elements in a plant in connection with the harbour site. The use of this method in arctic areas would require a much longer period for the construction than normal in warmer regions. To reduce the construction period it would be natural to move as much of the works as possible to factories in more industrialized regions so that the procedure on site would be a pure assembling of prefabricated elements. Prefabrication in this way combined with a really good planning of the constructing procedure would make works in the arctic less complicated and lower the costs. Due to short summer the construction period even small jobs last 2 or 3 years. The service functions in the villages are bad. The workers available are still not developed enough to make complicated craft. The materials all have to be transported from other parts except for the aggregates for the concrete. All those points invite the use of prefabricated elements from industrialized countries in the work, because the transport is more or less the same whether the elements are made or going to be made on site, the need for imported skilled workers is much less and the construction period shorter, so that the jobs can be completed in one summer. A problem with prefabricated constructions is always the joining of the elements and the fixing in the seabed. Under arctic conditions this problem however is even bigger due to the ice-pressures which can occur and because of the very often occuring lack of soft sediments overlying the rock, so that it is difficult to fix the structures in the bottom. All those problems have to be taken into account, but it is possible to solve them. Our moderate experiences in the field of harbour engineering in the arctic area are for Danish engineers limited to harbour works in Greenland. The paper presents some examples of prefabricated harbour structures which during the latest years have been applied in Greenland. Also presented are some examples of standard prefabricated elements which already exist on the market and which can be used in the harbour construction in arctic areas.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract of paper delivered at the First International Conference on "Port and Ocean Engineering under Arctic Conditions" held at Trondheim, Norway, August 23-30, 1971
• Corporate Authors:

  POAC Conference

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Steenfos, H P
  • Rodevang, B
• Publication Date: 1971-8-23

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cold weather construction; Construction; Force; Ice; Port structures; Ports; Prefabricated structures
• Geographic Terms: Arctic Regions
• Old TRIS Terms: Arctic engineering; Ice forces on structures; Port construction
• Subject Areas: Construction; Marine Transportation; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00025673
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Arctic Institute of North America
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 28 1972 12:00AM