school project

i wanted to know the standand weight capacity of a single 20'x10'x4 rendrag barge. i couldn't find this information anywhere, so maybe someone could give me an estimate or an educated guess. ...just for clarification: each section can float without any other floatation device attached, right?

any kind of information or advise on how a rendrag barge works would be awesome!

thanx
jeff

 

I'm not familiar with Rendrag barges, but I take it this is the one: http://www.vitallinkinc.com/barges.shtml

You could estimate based on displacement - (weight of steel skin + internal structure + any ballast + safety margin), also estimating where the desired highest waterline will be and only calculating the amount of volume below which will be displacing water.

Water weights 8.35 lbs per gallon.
1 cubic foot of space holds ~7.5 gallons of water.
Thus one cubic foot of space would displace 62.5 pounds of water.