Maeslantkering
The Maeslantkering ( Maeslant is Old Dutch for Meuse, after the river Meuse ) is a storm surge barrier that provides protection for approximately one million people in the greater Rotterdam.
After the devastating floods of 1953, 1836 victims of the Delta Plan has been developed which should protect the area from Rotterdam to Antwerp with dams. The inlets should be sealed and the coast line be shortened in order to provide storm surges less of a target. Of several designs, the best known construction today was finally realized. Never before a storm surge barrier was built with such large moving parts. Since these are all ashore, the ship traffic is not disrupted on the way to the port of Rotterdam.
The weir was built from 1991 to 1997 of 600 workers and cost 660 million euros. The whole structure consists of three times as much steel as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The two circular- arc-shaped gates are mounted for rotation about a ball joint with a diameter of 10 meters and a weight of 680 tons. The foundations of the bearings are made of concrete. The arms that connect the circular arc segments of the barrier gates with the hinges at the bearing points, have a length of 237 m and consist of three large, interconnected trusses made from steel tubes. The gates of the weir is 22 m high and 210 m long each. They were built out of a total of 18 individual segments, which were welded on ships in the water together.
During normal water level, the gates in dry docks are on the banks of the New Waterway. The shipping can then pass unhindered. With an impending storm tide the docks are flooded. This float on the gates. With two redundant five-cylinder hydraulic motors the gates are pivoted about its pivot point to the center of the New Waterway. There, the gates are flooded and lowered to the bottom of the waterway. Just before the ground contact creates a strong current between the gates and the reason that frees the foundation of debris and silt. To close the gates from the 360 -meter-wide New Waterway. In the middle, however, remains a gap of 1.5 m, so that the goals do not collide in a storm.
The closure of the waterway takes only 2 ½ hours and is performed when at Rotterdam, a water level of 3.00 meters above Normal Amsterdam Level (NAP ) is expected. This water level occurs on average once in five years. On both sides of the storm surge barrier are control centers that control the computer shutdown automatically. Every ten minutes to create a prediction of the water level in the next 24 hours. Once a year, a total closure is performed for verification.
In the adjacent visitor center construction, function and impact of the weir are explained. Also, satellite maps and a flood forming a button model ( shown on the left ) can be seen.
On the night of November 9, 2007, the weir was first closed due to a storm surge as the storm moved Tilo over central and northern Europe. Simultaneously, the Hartel Storm surge barrier was closed.