Panama Canal Expansion
Modern Engineering Marvel
The Panama Canal expansion project (also called the Third Set of Locks Project) is intended to double the capacity of the Panama Canal by 2016 by creating a new lane of traffic and allowing more and larger ships to transit.
The project is planned to:
Build two new locks, one each on the Atlantic and Pacific sides. Each will have three chambers with water-saving basins.
- Excavate new channels to the new locks.
- Widen and deepen existing channels.
- Allow ships around one and a half times the current width and length, with over twice as much cargo to pass.
- Raise the maximum operating level of Gatun Lake.
The project was formally proposed on 24 April 2006, saying it would transform Panama into a First World country. A national referendum approved the proposal by a 76.8 percent majority on 22 October, and the Cabinet and National Assembly followed suit. The project formally began in 2007. It was initially announced that the Canal expansion would be completed by August 2014 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal but various setbacks, including strikes and disputes with the construction consortium over cost overruns, pushed the completion date first to June 2015 then December 2015. On 14 April 2015, Canal Project Minister Roberto Roy announced that the Canal expansion would be operational by 1 April 2016.
The project is expected to create demand for ports to handle New Panamax ships. Several U.S. Eastern Seaboard ports will be ready for these larger ships, and others are considering renovations, including dredging, blasting, and bridge raising. In the UK, the Port of Southampton can handle post-Panamax vessels and is expanding to accommodate more, while the Port of Liverpool will be capable by 2015 and others are considering such expansion.
Why Panama Expansion Critical
Water is one of the world's most precious resources, and it's also the backbone of global trade. For a century, the Panama Canal has been a gateway for getting goods to people in ways that are quicker and cost-effective. However, today's post-Panamax ships are currently too wide and too long for the Panama Canal locks. Those larger cargo and container ships have to find alternative routes. Some travel to the U.S. East Coast via the Suez Canal, others transfer their cargo on the U.S. West Coast where it is taken by train, others drop their cargo at one end of the Panama Canal to be transported by train to the opposite end, and still others dock at a U.S. port and use intermodal transportation to transport their cargo from one side of the U.S. to the other. Once the new Panama Canal locks are open, the wider locks will accommodate these post-Panamax ships, which can carry three times as many cargo containers as ships that can now pass through the canal. Using the expanded canal will lead to lower transportation costs and reduced carbon emissions, and the new locks will operate in more efficient and sustainable ways, including reducing water consumption per ton of cargo transited. At the same time, the Panama Canal expansion is also having ripple effects in other major coastal cities, as their port infrastructure is being or will need to be upgraded to handle the larger ships and additional container traffic.
Challenges Galore
The third set of locks project includes two massive lock facilities - one on the Atlantic side and another on the Pacific, each with three chambers. One of the most innovative and challenging design elements was the large water basins that will save and reuse 60 percent of the fresh water used in the lock system. Using 3D computer modeling, cloud computing to connect teams and a physical scale model (1:30, over 200 feet long) our engineers had to determine the best way to optimize these water-saving basins to address varying water levels and improve the filling and emptying times of the locks while allowing safe transit of the much larger ships that will pass through. The design is a first for a project of this size, and it's especially critical for a country that needs to conserve fresh water resources used for water supply and hydroelectric power.
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In addition, the new locks have a total of 16 rolling gates, eight each for the Atlantic and Pacific lock facilities. Unlike the current canal, which uses gates that swing open across half the lock, the expanded canal will have rolling gates that move across the entire lock lane. The design of the lock heads and lock gates required the use of super computers to model their dynamic interaction under large seismic loads. In fact, the locks gates - the largest in the world, each weighing between 3,000-4,000 tons and standing 11 stories tall - were shipped four at a time from Italy across the Atlantic Ocean to Panama. That was quite the global maritime transportation feat in itself.
"We used leading technology to integrate our global team of engineers, project managers and experts, allowing us to gain time and cost efficiencies while tapping the best minds across many time zones. Our Building Information Modeling, or BIM, software from Autodesk provided 24/7 options for collaborating on the lock design, managing technical design changes, and coordinating all design and construction documents among our teams on four continents. Seamless collaboration and real-time problem solving also helped us adhere to the stringent technical requirements and specifications established by the Panama Canal Authority, which oversees and operates the canal." Says Alan Krause, CEO, MWH Global.
Work In Full Swing
Work is in full swing on the Panama Canal expansion, a project which includes the construction of two new sets of locks (one on the Atlantic side and one on the Pacific side) to increase the flow of commercial traffic along the Canal: a concrete reply to the developments in transport by sea, to enable even larger, heavier ships to pass through.
Mapei, was among the key players in Panama, with the supply of admixtures for concrete for what is today one of the largest construction sites in the world. The objective of this imposing project, which has been under way since 2007, is to double the capacity of the most important waterway in the world, exactly 100 years after the first crossing in 1914.
Once the new locks have been completed in the north side, at Gatun, on the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south side, at Miraflores, on the Pacific Ocean, even the Post-Panamax maxi container ships will be able to navigate along the 80 km long canal. These ships, up to 366 m long and 49 m wide, can carry up to 12,000 TEU (Twenty-Food Equivalent Units, the standard international volume for ISO container transport), compared with the 4,400 TEU currently allowed for the so-called Panamax ships.
The Panama Channel
Today, the Panama Canal is an artificial channel that crosses the Panama isthmus for an overall length of 81.1 km, joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The new waterway is scheduled to be completed in 2014, the centenary of the inauguration of the existing canal.
The Canal expansion project is the result of an agreement between the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), a Panama Government body delegated to running the infrastructure, and the Grupo Unido por el Canal (GUPC) consortium, comprising of Sacyr Vallehermoso (Spain), Impregilo (Italy), Jan de Nul (Belgium) and Constructora Urbana (Panama) companies, with an overall value of 3.22 billion US dollars.
Two Enormous Locks
The key elements of this project are the two enormous locks, one on the Atlantic coast and the other on the Pacific coast. The Canal today has two lock lanes. The new project consists of adding a third lane through the construction of two lock facilities. Every new lock facility will have three consecutive chambers named lower, medium and upper chamber regulated by four sliding gates, designed to move the vessels from the sea level to the level of Gatun lake (27 m) and back down again.
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Each chamber will have three lateral water reutilization basins for a total of 9 basins per lock and 18 basins in total. Like in the existing locks the new locks will be filled and emptied by gravity, without the use of pumps (200 million liters for each crossing).The new lock chambers will be 427 m long, 55 m wide and 18 m deep for a total length of 1.5 km. The two enormous reinforced concrete structures will be completed with a new canal access on the Pacific side. It will be the Italian company Cimolai, from Por-denone (Northern Italy), that will supply the new gates. Work will involve constructing 16 aluminium plate sliding gates, each one measuring 28 m in height, 58 m in length and 16 m in width. The locks will be transported to Panama by sea and then installed on site between July 2013 and January 2014.
Cutting-edge Admixtures
The total cost of the project is 5.25 billion dollars, and will be financed by the government by increasing toll charges by 3.5% for the next twenty years. Restructuring the Original Canal The project also includes restructuring work on the original canal. And in this case too, Mapei offered a contribution for renovation and consolidation work for the Gatun Lock, located approximately 30m below ground and considered to be the most imposing reinforced concrete structure ever constructed. This project uses a special type of concrete and Mapei has supplied admixtures to make it: PLANITOP 15, an inorganic powder product added to the concrete cast into formwork, and the liquid admixture MAPECURE SRA, specially formulated to reduce the formation of cracks caused by hygrometric shrinkage in normal and self-compacting concrete.
Mapei admixtures were selected to build all concrete structures including mass concrete as well as marine concrete, to be used to make the external sides and internal sides of the concrete locks, respectively. The latest generation in admixture technology was introduced, and will be used to make 5,500,000 Cum of concrete designed specifically for this grand structure. The aim is to ensure, through special tests on concrete, that the buildings will last 100 years. The first tests, carried out at the GUPC consortium site laboratory, started in Panama in September 2010.
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Cement paste samples were tested to verify the compatibility and to find the best plasticising capacity of various samples of admixture in combination with the types of cement scheduled to be used on the structure (CEMEX cement, type II ASTM and Panama cement, type II ASTM). In the first phase of testing, to overcome problems which arise when using complex raw materials (basaltic aggregates and basaltic pozzolan), admixtures from many other competitors on the international market were also tested. After numerous checks, carried out in the purpose-built Mapei laboratory in Panama, and then by cross-referencing the results with the GUPC laboratory, in mid December the admixture DYNAMON XP2 was judged to be the only solution suitable for use with the materials which had been actually chosen and which will be used in future on both the Atlantic side, where they are using Panama cement, and on the Pacific side, where they are using CEMEX cement. This led to Mapei's winning the Short Term Supply Contract.
In early 2011, after starting production of the concrete and aggregates, several serious problems concerning a considerable loss of mechanical strength and durability in the concrete were solved thanks to the contribu tion of Mapei. In this phase, Mapei's support was concentrated on various activities: a study and new chemical and mineralogical characterisation of the raw materials used (fine sand, pozzolan and cement); technical suggestions and advice to help make a correct choice for the flocculating and coagulating materials used to treat the water for cleaning the aggregates; a chemical and petrographic analysis and control of the pozzolanic activity of the fine basalt sand to reduce or optimise its content of natural pozzolan.
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Following a request from the client, Mapei then started to develop a new product which could work well with the new mix designs being verified at the GUPC laboratory. After an arduous competition, which included participants from our competitors, Mapei technicians managed to design a new, highly-evolved admixture called DYNAMON XP2 EVOLUTION 1, with the name chosen to give a sense of continuity to the enormous amount of work previously carried out on the old admixture. This product featured better maintenance of workability and application properties, in dosages even lower compared with the competitors.
The 21st of December 2011 is the date of the final contract for the New Panama Canal project. Formalised with the signatures of Giorgio Squinzi, CEO of the Mapei Group, and Bernardo Gonzales, Project Manager for GUPC, it represents a success story for Mapei. A victory which is the fruit of perfect team work and a consolidated modus operandi which included constant technical assistance on site to solve both large and small problems, and the decisive support of the Mapei Research & Development laboratories which investigated every material to find the most advanced technological solutions to make the best products.
A Brief History of the Canal
The Panama Canal is one of the most important feats of engineering in the world, and is a must for anyone visiting the city. It was dug out in one of the tightest points and in the lowest part of the Central Cordillera of the isthmus, which links the North American and South American continents. It takes a ship from 6 to 10 hours to navigate the Canal, which is made up of various elements: Gatun Lake, the Culebra Cut and the system of locks (Miraflores and Pedro Miguel on the Pacific side and Gatun on the Atlantic side). Gatun Lake, whose waters are fundamental for the functioning of the inter-oceanic waterway, was the largest artificial lake in the world for a number of decades. The locks system, which allows ships to carry out a change in level of 26 metres and so avoid having to circumnavigate South America, used to be the most imposing reinforced concrete structure ever built. Constructed by the United States between 1904 and 1914, it is 81 km long and is still a symbol of the strategic importance that the isthmus has maintained since the 16th century, and today is still one of the most important communications routes in the world.
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