The Best Modern Engineering Accomplishment Of Dubai
A little distance off the coastline of Dubai lie several remarkable islands in the form of gigantic palm trees: Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali, and Palm Deira, still under construction. Each consists of necks of land extending from a trunk attached to the Dubai coastline, and topped further outward by a great seawall for shelter. It must have needed a lot of geotechnical consultants to make the necessary analyses of the site’s bottom, each geotechnical consultant a specialist in seabed engineering. Because making an island from loose undersea sand will require a lot of engineering know-how even before whatever can be put down on record, prior to making any physical construction.
The Palm Jumeirah Crescent or jetty is only 13 feet above the sea height at low tide, and ascends from 34 feet of water at its deepest point. Its engineers contend that it is high enough not to go below surface in the rise of the sea level should global warming really happen, or any tsunamis that might develop in the Persian Gulf. The jetty is made from rocks blasted from the mountains. At its base is sand covered by a geo-textile or meshed fabric to inhibit the sand from flowing out. Anchoring down this ‘wrapped’ sand is a layer of one-ton rocks, over which two strata of six-ton stones sit to be the top part.
The peninsulas extending from the middle avenue are made also from sand dredged from the seabottom and then vibro-compacted to support buildings. Palm Jumeirah was made from 3,257,212,970.389 cubic feet of sand. Vibro-compacting is performed by filling up the sand with water then vibrating it via probes to make the sand move more thickly. initially a probe is inserted into the sand sub-surface through water saturation and vibration. As the probe reaches its desired depth, flowing sand is tossed down into the opening made by the vibrator probe. Thus a denser zone of sand is made, enough to support structures.
But, vibro-compaction may be appropriate only in uncontaminated sand where fine clay content constitutes only 15% maximum.
In each peninsula or frond are two rows of residential estates or buildings for the awfully rich, and anybody can buy his place there. Palm Jumeirah is expected to have 120,000 homeowners and laborers, plus another 20,000 tourists every day. So it is not really a small island where privacy can be found, but a colossal self-sufficient suburbia of the really, really wealthy. There are today residents living in the islands: real property owners, transients, speculators and laborers giving last touches to some portions of the reclaimed areas. A six-lane avenue today serves as the transportation conduit in and out the fronds, but in the last stages, residents will also be serviced by a monorail.
Palm Jumeirah and the three other man-made islands illustrate what modern engineering supported by so much money can do. While land building from the sea to create islands may not be a new idea because it has been made many times before, the project’s massive size makes it so.
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