World's Largest Ship Elevator Opens at Three Gorges Dam in Central China

The world's largest ship elevator at the Three Gorges Dam opened in Yichang City, central China's Hubei Province, on Sunday, with a prospect to increase the shipping capacity past the dam by six million tons a year.
The elevator, the existing largest lifting structure on a navigation route with the highest technical difficulty of the world, features large engineering scope, high lifting height and large weight lifting operation.
The largest weight to be handled by the elevator is freighter of 3,000 DWT(deadweight ton) and the maximum vertical lifting height is 113 meters.

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Picture of Pret12139 achievements

+6 1. Pret121 commented 8 years ago

The color commentary on this truly makes the clip. Also, not a lock. Pleasantly surprised.
Picture of mwak48 achievements

+3 2. mwak commented 8 years ago

Interesting, I'm curious to know how much pressure the elevator must endure.
Picture of Judge-Jake53 achievements

+3 3. Judge-Jake commented 8 years ago

#2 I've just looked it up and it's a very lot:*
Picture of MindTrick43 achievements

+3 4. MindTrick commented 8 years ago

Now i'll be dam'd...
Picture of loadrunner54 achievements

+2 5. loadrunner commented 8 years ago

And it does not matter how big the ship is, the weight will always be the same. as the ship replaces an equal amount of water in volume weigth.
Picture of fishy32 achievements

+1 6. fishy commented 8 years ago

#5 The ship displaces water ;)
Picture of PownMeister27 achievements

+1 7. PownMeister commented 8 years ago

#5 I was thinking the exact same thing, never thought about it that way before I saw the video. “the lifting force exerted on a body immersed in a liquid is equal to the weight of the liquid that the body has been squeezed out.”
it's extremely smart, they can have the same weigth in counter balance and the pulling force in each direction will be minimal.. Physics is amazing.
Picture of MindTrick43 achievements

+1 8. MindTrick commented 8 years ago

#5 not really, due to steel weighing more than water. The buoyancy changes with the weight of the ship, but its not correlating with the displacement. 10kg of steel doesn't mean it displaces 10 kg of water.
edit: i think what you're thinking about is that you can regulate the wanted weight very easy by using less water, and vica versa, which is very true.
Picture of Jim77736 achievements

+3 9. Jim777 commented 8 years ago

in case of fire, please use the stairs...
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0 10. thundersnow commented 8 years ago

Some interesting physics comments here :)...where is kirk to explain it in his words too? :)
Picture of PownMeister27 achievements

+2 11. PownMeister commented 8 years ago

#8 a floating object displace its weight in equal amounts of weight in water. Its called the archimedes principle.
If it sinks it is a different story..
So as long as the ship is floating #5 is correct
Picture of snotraddict45 achievements

0 12. snotraddict commented 8 years ago

Seems to me blocking off the bottom and pouring water into the column (letting water do the lifting) would be much more efficient.
Picture of MindTrick43 achievements

+2 13. MindTrick commented 8 years ago

#11 the comment #5 made says volume. Displacement of volume is not in direct correlation as the weight. He was prob thinking right, but the wrong terms. You can have 1 kg of steel can that takes less space than 1kg of water. You also have to take in consideration the force of the existing water in the lift, the water also weighs something, and is trying to push the boat "out of the water". Thats where the archimedes principle comes in, the force the object is being pushed "out of the water" with is equal to the floating part (sorry for explaining myself a bit poorly)
Picture of oleHashow30 achievements

+1 14. oleHashow commented 8 years ago

#12 110 meters mean 11 atmospheres of pressure it is hard to contain that kind of pressure. and also it is probably more time consuming to fill up the water than just lift it up it is not like they dont have enough power near by
there is 7560 tons of water in that lift when no cargo and it is 3.5 m deep so 30 times more would mean 227000 tons of water.

The elevator will cut journey times for passenger, cruise and small cargo ships passing through the dam from over three hours to about 40 minutes.

Larger vessels still have to pass the dam by means of a two-lane, five-chamber lock chain like climbing stairs. "Large vessels walk the stairs, small ones take the elevator" to pass the Three Gorges Dam for some time to come.
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+1 15. ComentAtor commented 8 years ago

after moving one million people to build the damn , one ship moving up doesn't seem like much of an effort :)
and if you'rew not in a hurry you can go this way http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~net/images/china/yangtze/img0429.jpg