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The Grand Canyon Skywalk is a 30 million dollar tourist attraction that has been built on the very edge of the Grand Canyon West in Arizona, as a 70feet wide, arched overhang that people can walk around. It gives the illusion of floating in mid air, right out and over the canyons mile deep ravine.
Skywalk was built in partnership with the Hualapai Indian tribe and Chinese-American Businessman David Jin. It was officially opened to the public on March 28th 2007. The Skywalk is a huge horseshoe shaped walkway that extends out 66 feet from the edge of the canyon and stands at a height of 3,600 feet above the bottom of the canyon. The height is taller than any of the worlds tallest buildings.
What makes Skywalk so impressive for the visitor is that the walls and the flooring are made of glass and you can see straight down into the canyon. The toughened 10 feet wide DuPont™ SentryGlass plus® with structural inter-layers is quite safe, being 2 inches thick. The composite laminated structure of the glass walkway is seen and described below:
The Skywalk has been built to rigid safety standards just as if was a building, the support arch is constructed of 2 inch thick steel plates with 94 anchor bolts that are over 46 feet long that are drilled into the ground. The whole structure put through various weather, strength and endurance tests and can withstand strong gale force winds of up to 100mph and an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale, this is due to it having shock absorbers known as 'mass dampers' built into its reinforced mainframe.
The Skywalk has been over engineered for extra safety and could hold a weight of 70 tons over its area, this equates to about 800 persons. For safety though, which is paramount for a structure such as this, the 'carrying' capacity is restricted to 120 persons. Visitors to the attraction are provided with over shoes that conform with health and safety regulations to prevent slipping on the smooth glass surface. Also the glass itself must be protected from thousands of tourists who may scratch the glass over time.
For those wishing to visit this tourist attraction then they must navigate a 120 mile drive from Las Vegas through the desert, which is an adventure in itself. There is a $25.00 admission fee per person who would like to " do the Skywalk " that will help to pay for the attraction and also help with the maintenance of it. This feature will probably soon attract illegal base jump parachutists if it hasn't done so already. |
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