The paper presents an innovative steering system for a river push barge dedicated for operation in environmentally sensitive inland waterways. Development of the inland waterborne transport in Poland is dependent on the exploitation of rivers which can be adapted to navigation in the limited range because a high percent of their length is classified within special environment protection areas of Natura 2000 network. This is now the main reason that their better exploitation cannot be obtained without an introduction of a new generation of waterborne environment friendly inland units. In naturally winding rivers with differing and rapidly changing depths and widths it is important to equip a push barge with an efficient steering system that has a low environmental impact. The innovative steering system proposed in the paper is composed of main steering devices located at the pusher stern, auxiliary steering devices installed on the barge bow and a mechanical coupling system.

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The paper presents the experimental test setup and measurement method of hydrodynamic force generated on the rotating cylinder (rotor) under uniform flow including the free surface effect. The experimental test setup was a unique construction installed in the flume tank equipped with advanced flow generating and measuring systems. The test setup consisted of a bearing mounted platform with rotor drive and sensors measuring the hydrodynamic force. The low length to diameter ratio cylinders were selected as models of bow rotor rudders of a shallow draft river barge. The rotor dynamics was tested for the rotational speeds up to 550 rpm and water current velocity up to 0.85 m/s. The low aspect ratio of the cylinder and free surface effect had significant impacts on the phenomena influencing the generated hydrodynamic force. The effects of the rotor length to diameter ratio, rotational velocity to flow velocity ratio, and the Reynolds number on the lift force were analyzed. The validation of the computational model against experimental results is presented. The results show a similar trend of results for the simulation and experiment.

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