Residents of Muscat have a new enchanting “destination ” this year to explore and relax during the Eid Al Adha Holidays. The sprawling Al Sahwa Gardens, inaugurated last week,provides the right ambiance and probably all the attractions and facilities that they can think of, to spend their time in a most enjoyable way.
One of the biggest park in the country, Al Sahwa , located in Seeb, near a key junction that links Muscat with other regions of the country. Occupies 300,000 square meters.It, In fact consists of not one but six gardens named after the sex wilayats of the capital governorate-Muscat,Seeb, Bausher,Muttrah,Al Amerat and Quriyat. The park boasts, among several other features , three electronically operated musical fountains, a piazza, 300 date palms and hundreds of blossoming trees and shrubs.
A superb example of Islamic architecture, the park is meant to provide families a ” suitable social environment to get together and children to play in open areas”. Al Sahwa is also Oman’s first public park to offer physical fitness facilities and equipment for adults and there are specially earmarked areas for walking and jogging.
It has a horse riding school, restaurants and coffee shops, information centre and a mosque. An amusement park for children is among new facilities planned in the second phase.
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The Akashi Strait is a busy shipping port, so engineers had to design a bridge that would not block shipping traffic. They also had to consider the weather. Japan experiences some of the worst weather on the planet. Gale winds whip through the Strait. Rain pours down at a rate of 57 inches per year. Hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes rattle and thrash the island almost annually.
How did the Japanese engineers get around these problems? They supported their bridge with a truss, or complex network of triangular braces, beneath the roadway. The open network of triangles makes the bridge very rigid, but it also allows the wind to blow right through the structure. In addition, engineers placed 20 tuned mass dampers (TMDs) in each tower. The TMDs swing in the opposite direction of the wind sway. So when the wind blows the bridge in one direction, the TMDs sway in the opposite direction, effectively “balancing” the bridge and canceling out the sway. With this design, the Akashi Kaikyo can handle 180-mile-per-hour winds, and it can withstand an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 8.5 on the Richter scale!
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Vital Statistics:
The Akashi Strait is a busy shipping port, so engineers had to design a bridge that would not block shipping traffic. They also had to consider the weather. Japan experiences some of the worst weather on the planet. Gale winds whip through the Strait. Rain pours down at a rate of 57 inches per year. Hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes rattle and thrash the island almost annually.
How did the Japanese engineers get around these problems? They supported their bridge with a truss, or complex network of triangular braces, beneath the roadway. The open network of triangles makes the bridge very rigid, but it also allows the wind to blow right through the structure. In addition, engineers placed 20 tuned mass dampers (TMDs) in each tower. The TMDs swing in the opposite direction of the wind sway. So when the wind blows the bridge in one direction, the TMDs sway in the opposite direction, effectively “balancing” the bridge and canceling out the sway. With this design, the Akashi Kaikyo can handle 180-mile-per-hour winds, and it can withstand an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 8.5 on the Richter scale!
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