Panama Canal Locks

The Panama Canal locks are considered one of the greatest engineering works of the world. No other concrete construction of equivalent to its size was carried out at the time it was built. The total measurement lengthwise of the Panama Canal locks is estimated to be almost two miles or over three kilometers.

The Panama Canal locks lifts up ships up to 85 feet to the main elevation of the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal locks has a total of six phases, each phase has two lock compartments, which doubles the amount of traffic it handles. The Panama Canal locks are divided into three sets of locks in the Canal. The first step of the Panama Canal locks is a two step flight at the Miraflores, which lifts the ships from the Pacific Ocean way up to the Lake Gatun. After the ships are lifted into the Lake Gatun, the ships will then continue to a triple flight which will lower the ships into the Atlantic Ocean. All the three sets of Panama Canal locks have two parallel flights which allow the ships to pass on opposite directions at the same time.

The lock chambers of the Panama Canal locks are 110 feet (over 33 meters) wide and 1050 feet (more than 300 meters) long. The lock chambers have a usable length of more than three hundred meters (1000 feet). The lock chambers of the Panama Canal locks are made up of massive concrete structures. The thickness of the base of the lock chambers ranges from 13.7 meters to 15.2 meters (45 to 50 feet). While the top of the lock chambers are only 8 feet (2.4 meters) thick.

Each one of the lock chambers of the Panama Canal locks needs more than 100,000 cubic meters or 26.7 million gallons of water to fill it from the lowered position to the raised position. And the same magnitude of water must be drained from the chamber to lower it once more. Three huge water culverts are fixed on the side and center of the walls. These huge water culverts are used to transmit water from the lake into the chambers in order to raise them.

The chambers are separated by gates in each flight of the Panama Canal locks. These gates hold back huge weight of water and are very much reliable and are strong enough to endure accidents. The Panama Canal locks are controlled electronically and the whole process of lock a ship up or down are manipulated by the central control room. The central control room of the Panama Canal locks is located on the center wall of the uppermost flight of locks. The controls of the locks are engineered to minimize the chances of error.