design of concrete barge

huangyhg

design of concrete barge
i am part of the r&d team in our company. we deal basically on vertical structures. currently we are looking into designing a concrete barge for shipping aggregates for our sister company.
1.) can anybody lead me to a literature or website to get some ideas on this item?
2.) does anyone have tips on doing this?
it's a matter of putting together a framework or reinforcing steel and numerous layers of high strength steel mesh and basically 'trowelling' or rolling the low slump concrete to it.  i had a bunch of literature (gleaned about 30 years ago) and made a coffee table using this...
do a web search for 'ferrocement' and see what pops up... there was a big push for this back then; nervi, an italian architect, was heavily involved with it...
a number or ocean going concrete ships were constructed in the us during world war i (i have seen the wreck of one at cape may, nj). references to these concrete ships has appeared in portland cement association publications, perhaps they will have some leads. also you may find someone who knows more about this aspect in the "engineering history" forum.
i've been promoting this sort of design one way or another for some years.
there isn't much in the literature in recent years except for construction of ferrocement hulls for small yachts and so on as in dik's reply, but the following ref should be useful to you for larger vessels:
'concrete afloat' published by thomas telford ltd london 1977. isbn 0 7277 0048 0.
it won't be in print but a decent library should be able to locate it for you.
(the largest concrete ship of recent years is for the n'kossa field offshore coast of africa built by buoygues.)
i'm in a bit of a rush so apologies for the quick reply.
if you have some specific points come back, and i'll see what i can dig up.
hope this helps.
good luck.
take a look at "design and construction of concrete ships", available at this link:
thank you for the leads... all are very helpful... i'll dig them up and give feedback of what i can find...
if there are any other leads or tips, i will appreciate it very much.