Construction of canals needs different types of machineries and equipments, the selection of which depends on many factors. These types of canal machines and their selection is discussed.
Canals are substantially substantial infrastructures that considerably affect the economy of the county or region in many ways. as a result, it is necessary to construct such sizable undertaking in the best possible way with lowest budget.
So, the selection of building machineries directly influences the cost of the undertaking because not only does it decrease needed man power but also improve the standard of the undertaking and decline the building period.
In order to specify the best and most efficient machineries, engineers must be familiar with the machine capacity, their suitability to his/her undertaking, and other machinery aspects.
That is why different canal construction machineries and their selection criteria for any given undertaking are explained in this article.
Fig.1: Canal Construction machinery
Fig.2: Canal construction Machines
Different types of machines are required for different canal building. Following factors are considered for their selection:
The former can be used to excavate canals with up to 9m top breadth. The latter can dig canals with up to 25m top widths. There are different types of excavation machines for digging canals such as bucket wheel excavator (as shown in Figure 4) and hinge bucket chain trimmer.
In addition to full section canals, the hinge bucker trimmer machine can be used for half section canal, extended half section canal and separated by berms.
Fig.3: Top Width of Canal
Fig.4: Bucket Wheel Excavator
Fig.5: Bucket Chain Excavator
Fig.6: Half Canal Cross Section Trimmer Machine
Lining of canals is crucially substantial because they eliminate seepage in the canal and hence the loss of water would be avoided.
Various machine liners with various capacities and sizes are available for canal lining such as towed boat liner, telescopic liner and hinge concrete liner.
Towed boat liner (Figure 7) can be used for canals with 6m top width and capable of lining up to 60m 2 per hour. Telescopic liner (Figure 8) is capable of handling canals with 9m top width and the lining rate is 180m 2 per hour. As far as hinge concrete liner is concerned, it used for canals with top breadth of up to 25m.
Similar to hinge bucket chain trimmer, hinge concrete liner may be used for full section canals, half section canals, extended half section canals and separated by berms. Figure 9 shows hinge concrete liner machine.
Fig.7: Towed Boat Liner
Fig.8: Telescopic Liner
Fig.9: Hinge Concrete Liner
Loaders are used to clean building site from debris, mud and excavated materials and upload these materials into to other vehicles to transport such materials away from building site. It also may be used to transport dry building materials in project site.
There are different types of loader such as wheel loader, backhoe loader, skip loader and telescopic loaders. Figure 10 to Figure 13 show different loader machine respectively.
Fig.10: Wheel Loader
Fig.11: Backhoe Loader
Fig.13: Telescopic Loader
Cranes are machineries similar to towers which consist of base, jib, motor and mast. Mobile cranes are commonly mounted on vehicles and used to lift or down materials.
Fig.14: Mobile Cranes
It is small size machinery which can be used in the construction of canals for many purposes such as clearing construction site and transporting light weight construction materials to the undertaking site.
Towable backhoe has a bucket in front and toe at the back and both can be replaced.
Fig.15: Towable Backhoe
Finishing canals is very important because it would avoid water logging. Finishing is conducted through concrete lining on both sides of the canal.
Vehicles that carry concrete can feed canal finisher from one side only and a conveyor which spans the canal, used to transport the concrete to the other side of the canal.
There are transverse and longitudinal joints created by attachments on the canal finisher. The joints will be finished by worker on the work bridge finish joint.
Fig.16: Full Canal Cross Section Finisher
Fig.17: Half Cross-Section Canal Finisher
It is used to crush rocks and stone to smaller sizes and there are various types of crusher which can be used in the canal construction. for instance, impact crusher, roller crusher, jaw crusher, cone crusher and pressure crusher.
Fig.18: Impact Crusher
Dozers are complicated to drive that has continuous treads and a board hydraulic blade in front. It is applied for many purposes for instance earth removing, cleaning and grading lands. The types of the blade used controls the function of the dozer.
Dumpers are small size machines which uses diesel to generate power. There are two main types of dumpers categorized based on the machine size such as dumper trucks and dumper crawler.
The main functions of dumper in canal construction are clearing construction site and transport construction materials to the undertaking site.
Fig.20: Dumper Trucks
Fig.21: Crawler Dumper
Paving canal is an alternative to lining canal, so either lining or paving is conducted for the canal. Paving machine used to pave the canal and it covers both sides of the canal.
The width of finishing is quite large, so the paving operation can be carried out in a higher rate. The machine can be configured to pave canals with different slope breadth.
Fig.22: Canal Paver Machine Followed by Stop Water Insertion Machine
It is well known machinery that used to mix concrete components to achieve uniform mixture. There are mobile concrete mixer and fixed concrete mixture.
Fig.23: Mobile Concrete Mixer
Fig.24: Stationary Concrete Mixer
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