The Tainter gate is a type of radial arm floodgate used in dams and canal locks to control water flow. It is named for its inventor, the Wisconsin structural engineer Jeremiah Burnham Tainter. [1]
Tainter, an employee of the lumber firm Knapp, Stout and Co., invented the gate in 1886 for use on the company's dam that forms Lake Menomin in the United States. [1]
A side view of a Tainter gate resembles a slice of pie with the curved part of the piece facing the source or upper pool of water and the tip pointing toward the destination or lower pool. The curved face or skinplate of the gate takes the form of a wedge section of cylinder. The straight sides of the pie shape, the trunnion arms, extend back from each end of the cylinder section and meet at a trunnion which serves as a pivot point when the gate rotates. [2]
Pressure forces on a submerged body act perpendicular to the body's surface. The design of the Tainter gate results in every pressure force acting through the centre of the imaginary circle of which the gate is a section, so that all resulting pressure force acts through the pivot point of the gate, making construction and design easier.
When a Tainter gate is closed, water bears on the convex (upstream) side. When the gate is rotated, the rush of water passing under the gate helps to open and close the gate. The rounded face, long radial arms and bearings allow it to close with less effort than a flat gate. Tainter gates are usually controlled from above with a chain/gearbox/electric motor assembly.
A critical factor in Tainter gate design is the amount of stress transferred from the skinplate through the radial arms and to the trunnion, with calculations pertaining to the resulting friction encountered when raising or lowering the gate. Some older systems have had to be modified to allow for frictional forces which the original design did not anticipate. [3] In 1995, too much stress during an opening resulted in a gate failure at Folsom Dam in northern California.
The Tainter gate is used in water control dams and locks worldwide. The Upper Mississippi River basin alone has 321 Tainter gates, and the Columbia River basin has 195. A Tainter gate is also used to divert the flow of water to San Fernando Power Plant on the Los Angeles Aqueduct. [1]
A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings, but are usually discussed as a separate category. In an open valve, fluid flows in a direction from higher pressure to lower pressure. The word is derived from the Latin valva, the moving part of a door, in turn from volvere, to turn, roll.
A cam is a rotating or sliding piece in a mechanical linkage used especially in transforming rotary motion into linear motion. It is often a part of a rotating wheel or shaft that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path. The cam can be a simple tooth, as is used to deliver pulses of power to a steam hammer, for example, or an eccentric disc or other shape that produces a smooth reciprocating motion in the follower, which is a lever making contact with the cam. A cam timer is similar, and were widely used for electric machine control before the advent of inexpensive electronics, microcontrollers, integrated circuits, programmable logic controllers and digital control.
A bearing is a machine element that constrains relative motion to only the desired motion and reduces friction between moving parts. The design of the bearing may, for example, provide for free linear movement of the moving part or for free rotation around a fixed axis; or, it may prevent a motion by controlling the vectors of normal forces that bear on the moving parts. Most bearings facilitate the desired motion by minimizing friction. Bearings are classified broadly according to the type of operation, the motions allowed, or the directions of the loads (forces) applied to the parts.
A sluice is a water channel containing a sluice gate, a type of lock to manage the water flow and water level. It can also be an open channel which processes material, such as a river sluice used in gold prospecting or fossicking. A mill race, leet, flume, penstock or lade is a sluice channeling water toward a water mill. The terms sluice, sluice gate, knife gate, and slide gate are used interchangeably in the water and wastewater control industry.
The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift in Tamfourhill, Falkirk, in central Scotland, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. It reconnects the two canals for the first time since the 1930s. It opened in 2002 as part of the Millennium Link project.
A ball valve is a flow control device which uses a hollow, perforated, and pivoting ball to control fluid flowing through it. It is open when the hole through the middle of the ball is in line with the flow inlet, and closed when it is pivoted 90 degrees by the valve handle, blocking the flow. The handle lies flat in alignment with the flow when open, and is perpendicular to it when closed, making for easy visual confirmation of the valve's status. The shut position 1/4 turn could be in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.
A trunnion is a cylindrical protrusion used as a mounting or pivoting point. First associated with cannons, they are an important military development.
Table Rock Lake is an artificial lake or reservoir in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas in the United States. Designed, built and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lake is impounded by Table Rock Dam, which was constructed from 1954 to 1958 on the White River.
The McAlpine Locks and Dam are a set of locks and a hydroelectric dam at the Falls of the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky. They are located at mile point 606.8, and control a 72.9 miles (117.3 km) long navigation pool. The locks and their associated canal were the first major engineering project on the Ohio River, completed in 1830 as the Louisville and Portland Canal, designed to allow shipping traffic to navigate through the Falls of the Ohio.
A hydraulic brake is an arrangement of braking mechanism which uses brake fluid, typically containing glycol ethers or diethylene glycol, to transfer pressure from the controlling mechanism to the braking mechanism.
In an automobile, ball joints are spherical bearings that connect the control arms to the steering knuckles, and are used on virtually every automobile made. They bionically resemble the ball-and-socket joints found in most tetrapod animals.
A pulverizer or grinder is a mechanical device for the grinding of many different types of materials. For example, a pulverizer mill is used to pulverize coal for combustion in the steam-generating furnaces of coal power plants.
A balanced-arm lamp, sometimes called a floating arm lamp, is a lamp with an adjustable folding arm which is constructed such that the force due to gravity is always counteracted by springs, regardless of the position of the arms of the lamp. Many lamp brands, as well as other devices, use this principle.
Folsom Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the American River of Northern California in the United States, about 25 mi (40 km) northeast of Sacramento. The dam is 340 ft (100 m) high and 1,400 ft (430 m) long, flanked by earthen wing dams. It was completed in 1955, and officially opened the following year.
Industrial fans and blowers are machines whose primary function is to provide and accommodate a large flow of air or gas to various parts of a building or other structures. This is achieved by rotating a number of blades, connected to a hub and shaft, and driven by a motor or turbine. The flow rates of these mechanical fans range from approximately 200 cubic feet (5.7 m3) to 2,000,000 cubic feet (57,000 m3) per minute. A blower is another name for a fan that operates where the resistance to the flow is primarily on the downstream side of the fan.
The Cannelton Locks and Dam is a tainter-gated dam with two locks on the Ohio River, on the border between the U.S. states of Indiana and Kentucky. The dam is 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of Cannelton, Indiana. Construction of the locks began in July 1963. The locks began operation in December 1966 and were completed April 1967. Construction on the dam started in August 1965 and the dam was completed in 1974. The structure was designed, built, and is operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District.
An oscillating cylinder steam engine is a simple steam-engine design that requires no valve gear. Instead the cylinder rocks, or oscillates, as the crank moves the piston, pivoting in the mounting trunnion so that ports in the cylinder line up with ports in a fixed port face alternately to direct steam into or out of the cylinder.
Braddock Locks & Dam is one of nine navigational structures on the Monongahela River between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Fairmont, West Virginia. Built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the gated dam and the lock form an upstream pool that is for 12.6 miles (20.3 km), stretching to Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.
Singur Dam also written as Singoor is an irrigation, hydroelectric and drinking water project located in Singooru village near Sangareddy district in Telangana, India. It is a major source of drinking water for Hyderabad city.
Medlow Dam is a heritage-listed major gated concrete-walled arch dam across the Adams Creek in the Blue Mountains region, located at Beauchamp Road, Medlow Bath in the City of Blue Mountains local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The dam was designed and built in 1907 by the NSW Department of Public Works. The dam's purpose is primarily for the potable water supply of the upper Blue Mountains region. The impounded reservoir is called Medlow Bath Reservoir. The dam is also known as Medlow Bath Dam, Lake Medlow Dam, Adams Creek Dam and Medlow Bath Reservoir. The property is owned by Sydney Water, a state-owned corporation of the Government of New South Wales. The dam was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 18 November 1999.