Quality Wins Project of the Year

9

Automated People Movers

Category

East London Cable Car, London, U.K. Continued

One of the initial challenges involved trying to construct the two main towers (both 86 m tall and weighing 570 mT) to accommodate the river crossing and one smaller intermediate tower, which measures more than 65 m in height and weighs 270 mT. The size of the towers, the fact that one had to be positioned in the Thames River and the need for ex- acting stability as a core requirement for the operation of the cable car also pre- sented several challenges. However, the design of the towers, using a complex helix structure to link the four steel rib- bons, assisted in providing the needed stability. The towers, made of approxi- mately 6,500 pieces of steel of varying thicknesses (30-50 mm), were then welded together before being connected to helix tubes that run inside the tower and provide the required stiffness. There are three main towers and two compression towers. The main towers support the system at height, and the compression towers provide rope diver- sion from the stations to the head of the towers. The main towers had to be con- structed to allow for a 51-m-tall ship to pass under the system at high tide, which is scheduled for twice a day. Each tower has been topped with a Doppel- mayr head (named after a cable-car contractor), which allows the cabling to run across the tops of the structures. The cable is made of twisted steel com- prised of 300 separate strands, is 50 mm thick and stretches 1.1 km across the river. The use of boats was required to make the initial rope connection during the short allotted timeframe during low

Project Year of the 2013

The project’s south tower and one of Europe’s largest cranes

tide. The cable was pulled into place and tensioned using a 12-T winch located on the platform of the South Terminal (Emirates Greenwich Peninsula). The cable was clamped and secured at each terminal and tensioned to gain a minimum clearance of 54 m above the high-water mark.

76 | WWW.ELEVATORWORLD.COM  | January 2013 Reprinted from ELEVATOR WORLD