Building dock
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The construction dock of a shipyard is a dry dock in which the individual segments or sections of a new building are assembled and welded. After this final assembly and extensive completion of a new ship or, more rarely, an offshore structure , the building dock is flooded and the new building floats.
history
In the past, ships were built on the shore or on the beach on simple building sites. As the ships got bigger, stable substructures were needed to run down.
Helgen
These helges were initially made of wood, later made of reinforced concrete with steel helgen frames on the sides, which were either supplied by the helgen crane or by a cable crane system with load capacities of one to ten tons with lightweight ship components such as steel plates, frames or stringers . By traverses coupled, higher weights could be transported. The Helgen of the former Mathias-Thesen-Werft , today Nordic Yards (formerly Wadan Yards, Aker MTW Werft), in Wismar could, for example, transport parts weighing around 50 tons with traverses. In the further development, Helgen cranes like those at Blohm & Voss and Nordseewerke were used, which could also transport heavier components coupled via cross-beams.
Building dock
In order to be able to handle even larger and heavier components, gantry cranes were used that run over dry docks known as construction docks. This became necessary when ever larger ships had to be built with short lead times. For this purpose, large components were assembled into sections, which were put together in the building dock to form the ship. In order to be able to carry out this assembly regardless of the weather, the building docks were roofed over. The Meyer Werft and the shipyards in Wismar and Warnemünde are examples of section production in covered or partially covered building docks in Germany .
literature
- D. Strobel, D. Dame: With MTW to the sea . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 1996, ISBN 3-356-00660-6 .