ABSTRACT
Today most ships try to reach or depart from their final berthing position in a harbour by using their own manoeuvring equipment. To these equipment belong the main propellers in combination with bow and stern thrusters or waterjet propulsors. They induce waterjets with velocities of water particles reaching 10 m/s. These jets are meeting the berthing structure and the bottom at the structure, causing liquefaction of the bottom soils and intensive erosion leading to considerable reduction of the stability of the structure.
The paper presenting the interaction between propulsor waterjet, quay wall and erodible bottom, gives the detail characteristics of the whole phenomena and ways of reduction of the bottom current velocities caused by propulsor waterjets. This gives the possibility of proper protection of the harbour bottom and thus the stability of the berthing structure. Finally an example of protection structure is given together with description of its failure which took place during operation.
