The Thames Barrier is located downstream of central London, United Kingdom. The barrier, built in 1982 on the Thames on the eastern side of the capital at Woolwich, was designed to protect 48 sq miles (125 sq km) of central London from flooding caused by tidal surges.
The barrier, made up of 10 steel gates, reaches 520m (1,700ft) across the river. When open, the gates lie flat on the river floor and close by being rotated upwards until they block the river. The four main gates span 61.5m (200ft) and weigh more than 3,000 tones each. The barrier is closed just after low tide to create an empty “reservoir” for the river flow to fill up. It takes 75-90 minutes to close
For the manufacturing material we chose Plexiglas because of the easiness of its supply. We used laser cutting to shape it and produced all the parts by ourselves.
The dimensions of our main body were our first difficulty. Because we produced all the parts in machine shop and unify them one by one it took long time and it made manufacturing process more complicated but real problem was after we complete the assembly because we manufactured whole system before we calculate the kinematic equations.
