Construction of the new ship lift at Niederfinow
The Federal Waterways Building Office in Berlin is currently erecting the new ship lift at Niederfinow to the north of the existing ship lift. The construction work encompasses erection of the upper outer basin, the canal bridge, the lower outer basin and the actual new ship lift at Niederfinow with an effective trough length of 115 m and an effective width of 12.5 m with water depth of 4 m.
The Geotechnical Engineering North Section K1 contributed to construction of the new ship lift with a feasibility study, a comprehensive ground survey and a foundation recommendation, as well as providing geotechnical advice on earthworks and on the foundation planning. More than 370 exploratory bores and 150 cone penetration tests were carried out as ground exploration measures, revealing tertiary and quaternary layers. The tertiary sands, glacial till and lower basin silt are excellent load-bearing soils. They are covered by more recent glacial run-off sedimentation, basin sand and local holocene sand, frequently found close to the surface. The new ship lift links two morphological units: the high plateau (> +30 m a.s.l.) consists of an outwash plain from the Weichselian glaciations age with highly heterogeneous stratification in the underground, with a sloping transition to the Oderbruch lowlands (approx. +4 m a.s.l.) that presents a far more uniform strata sequence.
The following geotechnical consultation services are currently being provided in the framework of the on-going construction work:
- Soil suitability for building dams and drainage systems
- Evaluation of anchor load-bearing capabilities
- Stability issues for the dams in the upper outer basin
- • Advice in the context of the ship lift foundations on a bottom plate 2.4 m thick placed on the underwater concrete bed anchored in the ground behind it. Here the settlement behaviour has to take account of anchoring the underwater concrete bed with GEWI piles, as well as the strengths and good load-bearing capabilities of the layers of glacial run-off sands.
Literature
Schinkel, Eckhard: Schiffshebewerke in Deutschland, Westfälisches Industriemuseum, Kleine Reihe 6, Dortmund 1991 (out of print)
Schinkel, Eckhard: Schiffslift. Die Schiffs-Hebewerke der Welt. Menschen - Technik - Geschichte. Essen 2001
H.-W. Partenscky: Binnenverkehrswasserbau – Schiffshebewerke
