Re:The Suez Canal will be widened
by egeozcan on Sunday May 16, 2021 @08:21AM
(#27173182)
It would have been nice to have some insight into how they think 40m (131 feet) would be enough. "In the hopes of avoiding a repeat" doesn't sound too confident.
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> It would have been nice to have some insight into how they think 40m (131 feet) would be enough.
It's probably what they think is achievable at acceptable costs. SUEZMAX is 400m long, but there's no way they can increase the canal width to 400m (at depth) to ensure no ship ever touches both banks at once. The minimum width is currently 205m at 11m deep (and the bank slope is 1:3 to 1:4 so a surface width of at least 270m), the work to double that would be insane.
That's what I wondered. Presumably it just means the ship can be even more off course / incorrectly aligned to the channel before it crashes?
Edit: maybe there is a curve in the canal and the radius of the curve limits the length of ship for a given width. Widening it at the curve would let you build longer...