The work and the technique: New Panama Canal
Works to expand the Canal began in August 2009. Extraordinary complex works were carried out, for the project, requiring premium technical skills and a huge commitment, with up to 10,000 people from over 30 nations engaged.
Two new set of locks were concomitantly built: one, on the Atlantic side; the other, on the Pacific. They allowed solving the 27 metre-difference in height existing between these two oceans and Lake Gatún. Therefore, ships could subsequently sail through the isthmus.
Each set of locks includes three chambers (an upper, a middle, and lower one).
The first difference compared to the existing locks, were the dimensions of the Neo-Panamax ships: each new chamber measures 427 metres in length, 55 metres in width and 18.3 metres in depth; against the 305 metres in length, 33 metres in width and 12.8 metres in depth of the previous ones.
The second difference is the introduction of an innovative set of locks. From the typical system invented by Da Vinci, the new project, instead, includes gigantic sliding sluice gates and Water Saving Basins: three auxiliary basins that convey, recover, and reuse the water from Lake Gatún needed to raise the ships, preventing up to 60 percent of water loss into the oceans.
The sluice gates number 16 in total: 8 are located on the Pacific side; 8 on the Atlantic side. They weigh between 2,500 and 4,000 tons, reaching 33 metres in height, about 58 metres in length, and 10 meters in width.
Designed and produced in Italy, they were shipped with large ships from Trieste to Panama and then were transported on flatboats to the Canal. Their positioning in the set of locks occurred with special wheeled trolleys, also known as "centipedes", which allowed placing them in their final position, through very delicate manoeuvres.
The new sluice gates always work as a couple: one is used to carry out the operations, and the other exists for safety purposes, in case of maintenance activities. For the previous locks, in case of maintenance, all ship crossings had to be interrupted, temporarily.
The opening and closing movement of the sluice gates is a masterpiece of engineering concentrated in an eight-minute movement.
Works on what has been called the Eighth Wonder of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers (a professional association founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession from around the world) were completed in 2016.