The approach of the passenger ship damaged the edge protection and the associated sealing surface of the lower gate. After the 190 m long, 12 m wide and 13.4 m deep lock chamber had been pumped empty following the setting of inspection seals, the Waterways and Shipping Authority (WSA) Danube MDK was able to inspect the damage. Over a length of more than 5 m, the edge protection and the anchoring were torn out of the solid structure of the lock chamber.
The SBE Magdeburg business division of Tractebel Hydroprojekt GmbH was commissioned at short notice to evaluate the new edge protection for the lower gate from a structural point of view and to provide static proof of the new construction. The special feature here was the tight timeframe between planning, verification and execution. Within a few days, the construction was structurally verified and manufactured almost in parallel. Special attention was also paid to the respective assembly conditions. Due to the production and delivery times of the components, the first interim statuses were already transmitted during the calculation and the production was carried out on this basis.
Thanks to the smooth and faultless cooperation of the companies involved and the WSA Donau MDK, the lock could thus be put back into operation within 14 days after damage to the edge protection, following alignment of the lock gate and a test run. The irony of fate was not long in coming, only one and a half weeks after the lower gate was repaired, another edge protection was damaged on the upper gate, which meant that the lock had to be taken out of operation again for a week.
Mathias Kant – Magdeburg