We all have seen Marine Drive in movies or in real life, but have you ever noticed why some strange looking stones are always laid on its side. To know the answer, let's talk on this topic today, for what purpose have these stones been kept over there. These stones that you actually see are called Tetrapods and the reason they are placed here is because sea waves carry a lot of energy which can damage the walls built on the shore very comfortably.
Tetrapods are made of concrete and have a tetrahedral shape as you can see. This shape is important because it distributes all the incoming force of the wave, resulting in the energy of that wave gets decreased. Even if the water came more faster or with higher speed, it would still fill in the gaps between these Tetrapods and its strength would decrease. These tetrahedron rocks get trapped in each other due to their unique shape, due to which even the strong force of water cannot move them away.
These stones were first made in France and were brought to Mumbai city in the late 1950s. Each stone with these unique shapes weighs about 2 tons i.e. 2000 kg and there are more than 6500 stones present on the entire coastline and the cost of this one stone is about 5000 rupees. Since 2008 till now these stones have been installed near Worli Sea Face, Haji Ali and recently near Worli Sea Link. The Tetrapod has proven to be a good inspiration for other countries to build many similar concrete structures for use in breakwaters or protect a coast from the force of waves.
Since being invented, the tetrapods have become quite popular around the world, with Japan being ranked number one, as nearly 50 percent of Japan's 35,000 km coastline is covered or replaced in some way by tetrapods or other similar structures.
0 comments:
Post a Comment