Klaipeda Port entrance rehabilitation project

The Klaipeda Seaport is located on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea inside the Klaipeda Strait, which joins the sea with the Kursiu Lagoon. Recently the Klaipeda Port Entrance Rehabilitation Project has been carried into effect including dredging of the navigational channel to cater for increasing ship sizes and extensions of the existing breakwater protecting the port from waves from the Baltic Sea. The abrupt change in bathymetry and the extension of the breakwaters affect both wave propagation and current conditions in the entrance. Considering this fact together with the hydrological correlation between the Kursiu Lagoon and the Baltic Sea make the Klaipeda Seaport complex when considering wave and current conditions. To determine the wave and current conditions in the final layout of the port entrance the hydrodynamic model MIKE21 was used for numerical simulations. The environmental data were subsequently implemented in the Danish Maritime Institute real-time simulator for the purpose of evaluating the new entrance layout and provide training of the pilots under the changed environmental and structural conditions.