Examples of engineering breakthrough projects

Japan is planning to build the tallest building in the world-known as the "sky city". It will be higher than any existing building, and thousands of people will live, work and play in this rapidly developing city. It can provide indispensable aspects of modern life, including parks, schools, houses, offices and shops. The city in the air will become the first residence in the world and an excellent way to solve the shortage of land resources in Tokyo. However, engineers still face many thorny problems: can it be built? Can it resist natural and man-made disasters? Engineers and architects from Japan and Canada are trying to solve these problems. They will overcome all difficulties and obstacles and create conditions for the boldest engineering miracle ever.

Tokyo Sky City, a space sky city, looks like a small science fiction novel, but it has solved the thorny problem faced by mankind: the already crowded city is becoming more and more crowded. Its main facilities include:

Apartment-a city in the air, which can accommodate 35,000 households. The residential area will be located in the center of the city, with a panoramic view of the city from the apartment building with a height of 106 meters. The apartment starts from the ground floor. Even if the overhead project is still under construction, residents can move into the built floor and start a normal life.

● Stadium-The city in the air is a real city, with not only houses and office buildings, but also a sports and entertainment venue the size of the Olympic Stadium, suspended between three residential buildings.

● Elevator-Each residential building consists of a 14 high platform, and residents are transported vertically by high-speed elevators. Visitors can climb from the ground to the top of 106 meters in just over two minutes.

● Center-such a tall building is easy to cause strong winds, and the circular design can just avoid the attack of strong winds. The central control area connected to the building can accommodate a helicopter landing site or even a small airport.

● Monorail-During the rush hour of urban traffic in the air, about 65,438+10,000 people shuttled between buildings. One of the modes of transportation is monorail, which spirals along the external walls of buildings and reaches thousands of households along high platforms.

● Green space-The 14 tower of each residential building is green space, full of trees, shrubs and flowers. Although the whole city is put in a glass cover, it doesn't need to withstand the wind and rain, but there will still be some outside air infiltrating in, which will bring the feeling of four distinct seasons. Would you be excited if you could fly directly from new york to London within 1 hour? If you want to go deep into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and take a maglev train with a speed of more than 8,000 kilometers per hour to cross the submarine tunnel, would you like to have a try?

Engineers are designing three interconnected movable tunnels, so that the train can go directly from Newfoundland to Scotland by the railway under the Atlantic Ocean. Incredibly, the train can run the whole tunnel in six and a half hours. If the design is successful, the global intercontinental travel mode will change dramatically in the next 20 years.

The plan includes the following contents:

Sea anchor-no matter how big or small, humans have never built a floating tunnel. To cross the Atlantic, every tunnel must be fixed at the bottom of the sea. In this way, this project needs at least 65,438+10,000 sea anchors. The tunnel must be located 45.7 meters below the sea level to avoid passing ships and minimize the scouring pressure of seawater on the tunnel so that the tunnel will not shake badly.

● Maglev train-In order to make tunnel travel possible, the passenger train must be 20 times faster than the fastest train now. This means that the magnetic levitation technology will replace the traditional wheels and tracks to lift, control and drive the train, and each carriage is like a closed spaceship.

● Maintenance point-The tunnel is fixed on the seabed below, and it floats about 45.7 meters below sea level. Maintenance pipes are located above and below them and are used as power, communication and maintenance channels. The whole tunnel may need 10 billion tons of steel, with a cost of 12 trillion US dollars and a construction period of 10 year.

● Vacuum pump-To reach the speed of 8046.5km/h, the train cannot encounter any air resistance. The whole system must be completely vacuum, so a huge vacuum pump is essential.

● Guide rails-The tunnel is equipped with eastbound monorail (from new york to London), westbound monorail (from London to new york) and emergency auxiliary monorail. The moving train did not actually land on the track, but was suspended about 2.54 cm above the track by magnetic force.

● Public pipeline-the power supply line in the tunnel is 4,827.9 kilometers long. These wires are laid in ordinary pipes.

● Gaskets-The tunnel from new york to London consists of 54,000 prefabricated pipe fittings, which are connected by waterproof and vacuum sealing gaskets, and it will take decades to complete. The appearance of each pipe fitting is made of stainless steel, which is covered with a thick layer of buoyant foam.

● Window-for passengers to browse the beautiful scenery of the deep sea on the submarine platform. Shimizu Engineering Company of Japan is designing and building a transparent building in Tokyo-called "Pyramid City". The city is as high as 1.07 km, covering both land and sea. Dozens of skyscrapers 100 floor are placed in it, which can accommodate 250 thousand residents and staff. Like other super buildings, the purpose of building Pyramid City is to solve the problems of congestion and environmental damage in Tokyo. Automatic robots will build cities with a new generation of carbon materials, and the climate in cities will be controlled by solar energy and wind power.

This extraordinary design contains the following wonderful ideas:

Robot-In this peculiar architectural design, the construction project is handed over to the robot, which is responsible for building all the structures of the city.

● Skyscrapers-These 30-story buildings are not only supported by pedestals, but also connected with the shell of pyramid cities through light carbon nanotubes. The idea originated from a design competition held in the 1980s to solve the problem of urban congestion.

● Nodes-Residents in the city can freely shuttle through the hollow pipes of the city through the moving sidewalks, unmanned driving cockpits and inclined elevators. The 55 nodes of the city are transportation hubs, which provide structural support for the city.

Inclined elevator-there is no elevator in the pyramid city itself, at least not on the outer wall of every building. But in most parts of the city, there are "inclined elevators" running on the slopes.

● Superstructure-Superstructure made of nano-carbon tubes plays the role of a pillar of the city, and its surface is coated with a photoelectric film, which can convert light energy into electric energy. This self-sufficient city also uses fuel cells driven by tides and even algae to obtain electricity.

Personal rapid transportation-there are no cars in this city. Residents can take the personal express cabin to most places in the city. This is a pollution-free means of transportation, controlled by computer, and can freely shuttle in hollow pipes extending in all directions.

● Pillars-If the building materials on the market are used, the city will be extremely heavy. But if we use ultra-light and super-strong carbon nanotubes-a cylinder wrapped with ultra-fine carbon fibers, the weight of this pyramid city can be reduced by 100 times. However, the pillars of pyramid cities must still be made of special concrete to bear extreme weight. Today, there will be a magnificent bridge on our drawing board, which will break any logic and expectation that human beings are used to. Imagine that a great building will connect North America and Asia and bring unprecedented economic growth to the two continents. This bridge includes 220 spans, above the 88-kilometer-wide turbulent sea and even the ice ocean. In order to achieve the goal, the bridge must be located on hundreds of concrete piers, each weighing millions of pounds, to resist the strong pressure of millions of tons of Atlantic ice floes. The climate of the Atlantic Ocean is famous for its cold and harsh, so the whole bridge must be wrapped in thick concrete, even the steel cable is no exception.

The plan includes the following contents:

● High-speed train-the envisaged bridge is divided into three layers: the top layer is used for vehicles, the middle layer is used for high-speed trains, and the bottom layer is used for oil and gas pipelines. The lower two floors are closed and can be used all year round. The top floor is only open to cars and trucks for four months a year.

● Two-lane Highway-The bridge across the Bering Strait itself is of little value, and thousands of miles of new roads and railways must be equipped to truly connect the two ends. This "Arctic Corridor" stretches for 4,000 miles, from central Siberia to southern Canada, connecting Eurasia and the western hemisphere.

● Single cable column-The bridge has 220 piers, and each pier is connected by a span. A huge single cable is wrapped in concrete to resist bad weather, supporting the bridge deck at an altitude of 60.96 meters above the strait connecting the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean.

● Piers-The 88km Bering Strait Bridge needs 220 piers, which are conical in shape, similar in shape and function to the channel of an icebreaker, and each pier weighs 50,000 tons.

● Pipeline-a bridge that takes decades and the estimated cost is as high as $654.38+0.05 billion. It must bring economic benefits. The bottom of the bridge will be closed, and Siberian oil and gas will be transported to North America through pipelines.

● Weather-Bering Strait Bridge will not only become the longest bridge in the world, but also cope with the bad weather that other bridges can't compete with: huge icebergs, turbulent sea water and cold at MINUS 40 degrees Fahrenheit. How different would Europe be if we could easily cross the huge Alps through tunnels?

The 56.3km-long Alpine Tunnel will be the longest tunnel in the world. During the construction, the workers braved the high temperature and worked under the crumbling rocks. It was a narrow escape. Engineers began to use special tunnel excavators instead of manpower to prevent workers from dying from landslides. In addition, the staff also used the laser imaging system to explore rock cracks in dark caves to avoid possible dangers.

This design, which is in full swing, contains the following elements:

● Conveyor belt-The conveyor belt system transports the crushed stone from the tunnel and sends it directly to the concrete processing plant. After recycling, most stones will be made into concrete and reused in tunnel construction.

● Spraying concrete gun-if a new wall is built, the manipulator will spray liquefied concrete to every inch of the wall at a distance of about 59.4 meters ... In just a few seconds, the concrete will dry and harden and stick tightly to the wall to prevent landslides.

● Recycling Road-The pebbles dug by the tunnel excavator will fly into the bucket, then be transported out of the tunnel and sent to the concrete processing plant.

● Cutting bits-Each huge tunnel excavator is equipped with 58 cutting bits, which can rotate counterclockwise, just like sharp teeth, cutting rocks into tiny pieces. If full power is used, the tunnel excavator will advance 39.6 meters a day. The whole excavation project is expected to be completed in 2009.

● Supporting shield-each tunnel excavator is worth $2,654,380,000. In addition to the cutting bit, the support shield is also an indispensable helper. The support shield is a mechanical hydraulic arm, which can be embedded in the stone wall to help the drill move forward.

● Train-once completed, trucks can travel in the tunnel at the speed of 16 1 km per hour, while the speed of buses can reach 249.5 km per hour.

Hangzhou Bay Bridge, with a total investment of 65.438+007 billion yuan, connects Haiyan in Jiaxing and Cixi in Ningbo. It is located in the center of the economically developed triangle of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Ningbo, and is a convenient passage for the national trunk line-the third line to cross Hangzhou Bay. The bridge is planned to be completed in five years, with a total length of 36 kilometers, including a bridge length of 35.7 kilometers, a two-way six-lane expressway, a design speed of 100 kilometers per hour and a design service life of more than 100 years. It is planned to be completed in 2008 and opened to traffic in 2009. Hangzhou Bay Bridge is even longer than world famous bridge, such as Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Bahrain Embankment Bridge in the United States, making it the longest sea-crossing bridge built or under construction in the world.