When designing dredging equipment, boundary conditions such as local circumstances, soils to be dredged, dredge and dump area, weather conditions, environment, etc. have to be taken into account. The dredging equipment will be used in an aggressive environment under heavy, dynamical loads. Thus a good understanding of the dredging processes is necessary.
Research and education are both directed towards the design of dredging equipment from the knowledge of the dredging processes. So both process and design are present in research and graduation assignments.

Over the past couple of years, mechanized shield tunneling has attracted an increased amount of interest in the Netherlands. This technique, which until now has never been used in the Netherlands, offers some spectacular new possibilities for the construction of underground infrastructure.
Shield tunneling especially challenges engineers working in the combined fields of both mechanical and civil engineering.
The section of Dredging Technology is involved with shield tunneling from a mechanical engineering perspective.

Bulk Materials Handling covers the transportation, loading and unloading, storage, upgrading and other handling activities of raw materials.
Examples of these materials are: coal, iron ore, agricultural products and semi-manufactured goods.
Research and education involve the design of handling equipment such as transshipment cranes, belt conveyors, scrapers, wheel-reclaimers, shovels and silo's.
These activities are based on the knowledge of bulk materials behavior.