Rick van de Wetering wins the IADC Young Author Award 2025

Rick van de Wetering, Research Engineer at Royal IHC and Ph.D. candidate at Delft University of Technology, has won the International Association of Dredging Companies (IADC) Young Author Award 2025.

The Young Author Award is granted at industry-leading conferences, with 2025’s winning young authors selected from the proceedings of the 24th WODCON Congress, held from 23-27 June 2025 in San Diego, USA.

Rick van de Wetering was selected as the Young Author Award winner for his contribution to the paper “A laboratory scale linear rock cutting setup to study cutting forces of blunt chisels”.

Dredging hard rock with a cutter head, as used on a cutter suction dredger, is becoming increasingly important as drilling and blasting are often restricted. Understanding the cutting process and resulting forces on the chisel can improve design and efficiency.

Literature shows most studies focus on sharp chisels and often ignore the normal force, which arises from wear flats that resist penetration.

The wining paper presents the linear rock cutting setup, developed by Royal IHC, to study the impact of chisel wear on cutting and normal forces.

Repeatability tests with a sharp chisel showed consistent results, with a maximum variation of 16%. The normal force was slightly negative, pulling the chisel into the rock – consistent with literature.

A test with a worn chisel showed increased cutting forces, with a much larger rise in normal force, confirming its significance during rock cutting with worn tools.