KUGIRA!!!
Kugira means "Whale" in Japanese. To me, it sounds like it should be pronounced in the same tone and manner in which you would pronounce "GODZILLA"!
One of the largest caisson-building docks in the world is the Kugira (‘whale’ in Japanese). This herculean machine from ACCIONA measures the equivalent of an 18-floor building (56 metres tall, 74 metres long and 49 metres wide). A team of between 140 and 200 high specialised professionals work on the Kugira around the clock seven days a week, and it can manufacture concrete caissons weighing up to 24,000 tonnes. This means that it can create a seawall or a berthing dock 200 metres long from scratch in just one month.
Once a caisson is completed, it is launched by being partially sunk until the caisson can float, and then it is taken by tugboats to the place where it will be placed over the platform on the sea floor, where tonnes of material has previously been laid to create a uniform base. Once it is in its exact position, the caisson is secured in place by filling the cells with water, and later they are filled with sand to make them completely stable. Although this procedure may sound cumbersome, it does not interfere with port activity.
www.acciona.com/updates/articles/worlds-largest-caisson-d...
When you're walking down a large dock you don't normally think about the way the dock was built or who it was that built it. Reading about the Kugira gave me a whole new appreciation of the things that go into building a dock!
At first I thought this was just a Jackup Rig for deep sea oil eploration. Boy, was I wrong on that.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackup_rig
KUGIRA!!!
Kugira means "Whale" in Japanese. To me, it sounds like it should be pronounced in the same tone and manner in which you would pronounce "GODZILLA"!
One of the largest caisson-building docks in the world is the Kugira (‘whale’ in Japanese). This herculean machine from ACCIONA measures the equivalent of an 18-floor building (56 metres tall, 74 metres long and 49 metres wide). A team of between 140 and 200 high specialised professionals work on the Kugira around the clock seven days a week, and it can manufacture concrete caissons weighing up to 24,000 tonnes. This means that it can create a seawall or a berthing dock 200 metres long from scratch in just one month.
Once a caisson is completed, it is launched by being partially sunk until the caisson can float, and then it is taken by tugboats to the place where it will be placed over the platform on the sea floor, where tonnes of material has previously been laid to create a uniform base. Once it is in its exact position, the caisson is secured in place by filling the cells with water, and later they are filled with sand to make them completely stable. Although this procedure may sound cumbersome, it does not interfere with port activity.
www.acciona.com/updates/articles/worlds-largest-caisson-d...
When you're walking down a large dock you don't normally think about the way the dock was built or who it was that built it. Reading about the Kugira gave me a whole new appreciation of the things that go into building a dock!
At first I thought this was just a Jackup Rig for deep sea oil eploration. Boy, was I wrong on that.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackup_rig