Before entering fully into the meaning of the term dredge, we are going to proceed to know its etymological origin. In this case, we can point out that it is a word that derives from French, exactly from “drague”, which can be translated as “red”. According to abbreviationfinder, BHD stands for Backhoe Dredger.
The verb dredge refers to the use of a dredger to achieve the cleaning and deepening of a river, a lake, a canal or another body of water. The dredger, for its part, is the machine that allows this task to be carried out by extracting rocks, sand and other materials and sediments.
By dredging, it is possible to increase the depth of a waterway. In this way, navigation is facilitated, allowing large vessels to move without the risk of running aground. That is why these tasks are necessary in ports: if you intend to receive huge cruise ships, for example, it is likely that dredging will be required.
Dredging, on the other hand, gives greater water transfer capacity to the road in question. This minimizes the possibility of flooding in surrounding areas.
There are different types of dredgers according to the characteristics of the land to be dredged. Some of these machines are installed on land, while others are operated from boats.
What is done when dredging is to excavate a material that is submerged, extracting it and bringing it to the surface. This action results in an increase in the depth of the body of water and a decrease in its level.
Mechanical dredgers include excavator dredgers, front-loading shovel dredgers, continuous hopper dredgers, and bucket dredgers. In the group of suction dredgers, on the other hand, we can find running suction dredgers, stationary suction dredgers and cutter dredgers.
It is interesting to establish, in addition to everything indicated, that the dredger was a machine that was commissioned to design the great genius Leonardo da Vinci. Specifically, that one responded to the name of lagoon dredger and it was an excavator in charge of cleaning the bottom of certain channels.
Its operation and principle was similar to that of the dredgers that exist today and was based on the use of a series of buckets that acted one after the other and that while they were digging allowed the dirt and collected material to be stored in devices that responded to the name of storage floats.
Nowadays, a model of this type of contraption that responds to the name of the van veen dredger is well known. What this achieves is to obtain samples of superficial sediments in medium-hard or soft bottoms. Specifically, it is used very frequently both in biological studies and in others of a hydrological nature and even in those that fall within the environmental field.
Its appearance is that of two spoons that are connected through a hinge. Those are separate, but they are brought together in order to collect the sediment samples.