This Dubai center grows food in the desert 0:48
(CNN) -
In a city full of superlatives, the latest addition to Dubai's long list of "biggest" and "tallest" is about to hit the record books.
Ain Dubai, the gigantic observation wheel that has been under construction in the city's Bluewaters Island development for more than six years, will open on October 21, 2021, thus becoming the largest “observation wheel” in the world.
But not only did he beat the competition, he left it far behind.
At over 250 meters, Ain Dubai is 82 meters taller than the current tallest Ferris wheel in the world in operation, the High Roller in Las Vegas.
It is almost twice the size of the London Eye, which towers over the River Thames at 135 meters.
Do you practice yoga, get married or have a cocktail at a height of 167 meters?
Alone in Vegas
Not a city that does things by halves, Dubai's latest accolade adds to its growing list of engineering feats that occupy pages in Guinness World Records.
Dubai is also home to the tallest tower in the world (the Burj Khalifa), the tallest restaurant in the world, the tallest infinity pool in the world, the largest fountain show in the world, the fastest roller coaster in the world, the theme park largest covered place in the world and ... you get the picture.
First announced in February 2013, Ain Dubai took more than eight years to complete.
Construction began in May 2015, with a planned completion date of early to mid-2019. That date was subsequently moved to October 20, 2020, and was delayed for another year when Expo 2020 was postponed for a year due to the pandemic.
Although rumors circulated about the reasons for the delays, the team behind Ain Dubai says that with any construction project of this scale, delays are inevitable.
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Capacity for 1,750 passengers
The Ain Dubai wheel can carry up to 1,750 passengers at a time.
Darren Brooke, senior technical director at WSP (Ain Dubai's principal consultant and architect, who essentially designed the wheel), told CNN that his team "was constantly pushing the standards."
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"[This has] the area of four times a standard wheel, [so] we had to put a lot more emphasis on the design, making sure that the design approach is refined as much as possible, while still staying within the limits. design standards. But refining that a lot to arrive at an efficient and profitable design. "
And the numbers associated with that design are impressive.
The structure used 11,200 tons of steel, 33% more than the amount used to build the Eiffel Tower. The maximum force required to lift the wheel was 2,500 tons. The hub and axle of the structure weigh 1,805 tonnes, the equivalent of four A380 aircraft, while the combined weight of the tire and the 48 passenger cabins is 7,500 tonnes. If the 192 spokes that hold the wheel, each consisting of 107 separate 9mm-thick wires, were laid together end-to-end, they would stretch from Dubai to Cairo. Each of the 48 cabins is designed for 40 people, which means that up to 1,750 people can ride Ain Dubai at any one time.
And since Bluewaters is an island made up of reclaimed land, the piles had to be drilled down to the bedrock to support the weight of the structure.
Ain Dubai is 82 meters taller than the High Roller wheel in Las Vegas.
Global expertise
As for the passenger experience, given that this is Dubai, it is naturally a step above a regular ride on an observation wheel.
There are three different types of booths to take in the 38-minute rotation: observation booths (the standard option), social booths (these are the "VIP" option and have a bar in the center of the capsule), and private booths, which they can be booked for special occasions and include the option of a private three-course dinner during two rotations of the wheel.
To bring all of this to fruition, experts from all corners of the world were called in: consultants from the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Italy have contributed to key aspects of the design.
Each wheel rotation takes about 38 minutes.
But perhaps the biggest success was hiring Kevin Dyer as COO of Ain Dubai.
Dyer used to be the London Eye's technical director.
Although Ain Dubai was designed to last 300,000 cycles, or 60 years, to meet strict design and safety codes, measures have been put in place to try to extend that life.
Experts from the Milan Polytechnic, who also worked on the London Eye, analyzed the cables and the stress cycles of the structure, Brooke said, to try to make them last as long as possible.
In doing so, they have been able to "double the life of the cables" by looking at the stress cycles and actual loads on each of the London Eye cables, rather than the expected loads, Brooke said.
"The forces that each of those cables has is 300 tons of load at its maximum point. Each of those 192 cables goes into those axes, or into that hub. So there is a huge concentration of forces."
Accelerators were also installed on several cables to obtain real-time data on each of the stress cycles, which will be analyzed and are aimed at prolonging the useful life of the cables and, therefore, of the entire structure.
Earthquakes and storms
But the temporary works to help build the wheel have been as ambitious as the wheel itself.
A 135 meter high truss structure, built with crane mast sections, was used to place the wheel legs.
A 300-ton frame was built to secure the eight sections of the wheel.
A bespoke lift system then pushed each wheel segment 100 meters into the air, where it was attached to the axle, rotated, and another segment attached.
During the construction process, there were rumors that the structure had design flaws that contributed to delaying the opening date: from seized bearings that had to be replaced to sound problems in the cabins, which had to be redesigned.
However, Brooke flatly denies those claims.
"I have not heard any rumors that are based on real events. I have heard rumors that the foundations were sinking, for example," he says.
"Ain Dubai is the safest place in Dubai. And I say that for two fundamental reasons. One, it is designed for an earthquake of one in 2,475 years. The only other place that is designed like this is a hospital. It is also designed for storms. of 160 kilometers per hour, that is to say, a hurricane of degree 12 in the scale of Beaufort ".
A spokesperson for Ain Dubai shared a similar sentiment: "What we have designed and developed here is enormously complex - it has never been done before, on this scale, so much of what we did was blaze new trails."
"Of course this means that things don't always go as planned along the way. We run into difficulties, but as is the spirit of Dubai, we adapt, find solutions and are confident that what we are doing. offering with Ain Dubai outshines everything that has come before. "
Tickets are already on sale at aindubai.com.
Prices start at AED 130 (about US $ 35).
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