Kelson + Riverine Tech

Case Study Overview

As the Principal Investigator at Riverine Tech and a Research Engineer at VPI Technology, based in Draper, Utah, Dr. Wyatt Felt’s role is to lead complex government research and development projects. Under an agreement with the Department of Energy, Riverine Tech is currently developing techniques to clean trash out of the Delaware River. Dr. Felt recognized gaps in their team’s knowledge about mooring the proposed system in the river and was referred to Kelson Marine by one of the project’s partners for assistance in designing and analyzing the moorings for the system.

One of Riverine’s biggest needs was help with determining what type of mooring system to use in the Delaware River, given that it is a tidal estuary and is affected by flood currents from the rain as well as daily cyclical tidal currents. “Our prototype system has a large floating structure that needs to operate for several weeks and we needed a mooring system that is easy to deploy and recover.” says Dr. Felt. 

“We reached out to Kelson for help with the design. They were not only able to provide an analysis of the river flow and a statistical model of floods, etc. but also helped us reason through the different load conditions that the system would experience and adjust the design to be able to accommodate them. Kelson Marine was able to come in and explain to us which mooring technique was going to be most efficient, based on the conditions of the river bed, and help point us in the right direction. Concepts like “scope” and the appropriate sizing of anchors were very foreign to us coming from a desert state here in the west. We needed someone who could run an analysis of our mooring system and anticipate issues in our design. Kelson Marine was able to do that for us. They are very professional and very responsive. We’ve been very impressed with the thoroughness of their analysis - the kind of analysis that was simply beyond our expertise to conduct.”