The Falkirk Wheel is a boat lift presented by Dundee Architects located in Falkirk (Scotland) at the end of a reinforced concrete aqueduct. Even though the lift looks really amazing, the most important objective was to build a boat lift capable of linking two historic canals. It was built for the millennium, and the whole structure had to illustrate the architecture and technology of it.
Even though what you see is mostly concrete, there are 1'200 tons of steel, which had to be put together like a "giant mecano" with an accuracy of just 10 mm.
The wheel can lift 600 tons, which corresponds to the weight of the water and a boat. Of course, what makes it very complicated is that the structure turns and therefore the stresses change the whole time. The steel sections were bolted together as these stresses could induce fatigue on normal welded joints. 15,000 bolts are used on the structure.
Boats entering the Wheel’s upper gondola are lowered, along with the water that they float in, to the basin below. At the same time, an equal weight rises up, lifted in the other gondola. This works on the Archimedes principle of displacement. That is, the mass of the boat sailing into the gondola ...
