During the 1st week of December, Bollard Proof were contracted to carry out bollard load testing at ABP’s Port of Southampton. The port is vital to the UK’s export market and is the number one vehicle handling port. It is also Europe's leading turnaround cruise port as well as being the country’s second largest container terminal.
Situated in the port’s Western Docks, the Mayflower Cruise Terminal is shortly to receive upgrades to its main infrastructure and bollards are part of this development. The berth consists of a concrete monolith gravity structure built around 90 years ago with mooring bollards cast into the concrete cope. The original as-built drawings did not indicate the bollard capacity, but they had in more recent times been limited to 50 tonnes with a view that they might well exceed that value.
Bollard Proof were tasked with providing a physical load test on the berth’s bollards, to a load of 100 tonnes. Completion of these tests would allow the bollards to be rated at 70 tonnes whilst allowing a reasonable residual safety margin. Bollard Proof is entirely unique in that its rig can load test at combined inclined angles which make it representative of an actual modern cruise ship’s mooring lines. The bollards were loaded and held at 100 tonnes at a 45°vertical angle combined with an offset in plan angle of 30°.
We are delighted to report that all 8 bollards on the berth passed the test without any damage to the bollard or the concrete, and our laser within the rig did not detect any movement. All bollards were tested in a single day, proving again that Bollard Proof has the only genuine representative bollard load testing capability on the market.
