Falkirk Wheel: the most incredible boat lift
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 will displace an exactly proportional volume of water so that the final combination of ‘boat plus water’ balances the original total mass.
Each gondola runs on small wheels that fit into a single curved rail fixed on the inner edge of the opening on each arm. In theory, this should be sufficient to ensure that they always remain horizontal, but any friction or sudden movement could cause the gondola to stick or tilt. To ensure that this could never happen and that the water and boats always remain perfectly level throughout the whole cycle, a series of linked cogs acts as a back up.
The amount of energy need to turn the wheel is very small (really!), as is has a simple and precise rotating system. A group of ten hydraulic motors located within the central spine provide the the 1.5kw of electricity needed to turn it.
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The Falkirk Wheel: http://www.thefalkirkwheel.co.uk/
