Recap of the stemng meetup 2018. Special reference to stainless steel!

On the 11th of july 2018 (some days ago) a group of great minds came together to meet and familiarize with one another – yes, I am talking about the 2018 stemng meetup!

The meetup had a lot of steemains in attendance. Our sub-community curator @gentleshaid was around alongside awesome writers like @temitayo-pelumi @agbona @mrbreeziewrites @amazonaesh @sogless @funmiakinpelu @eurogee @real2josh @herbayomi @thurllarnie @synick @bookie @samest @dandymee @emperorhazzy @djoi and my humble self @rharphelle.

I and @temitayo-pelumi were the first to arrive while the others arrived in due time. I was so eager to see what the faces behind the keyboards look like and I was a little disappointed that @greenrun didn’t come. After the arrivals have been confirmed, we all proceeded to take a tour of the venue.

Oh! I didn’t tell you where the venue was. It was held at the Lekki Conservation Center (LCC) located at Lekki Penninsula in Lagos, Nigeria. To be sincere with you, it is a lovely place to hang out. Just as the name implies, it houses a lot of plants and animals in their natural habitat. It was fun to see monkeys jumping freely from tree to tree and not in a cage as we see in the zoo. At a point, I wished it would be like Jurassic park (wink). We took a walk on the wooden walkway through the swampy habitat I was looking out for snakes and crocodiles but unfortunately couldn’t see any (@agbona can relate), the tour guide said our voices might have scared them off (only the monkeys were not scared) after a while we arrived at the center of attraction – the longest canopy walkway in Africa, yes you heard read me right.

The walkway spanned for a whopping 401 meters and reached a height of 22.5 ft. As a result of this, it made it possible to see the vegetation from a very nice vantage point overseeing the treetops and the beauty of nature. Amazing as it sounds, it is not for the faint at heart, it is a freaking heart shaker (you can ask @sogless). Talk about a combination of fear and excitement.

Apart from the beauty of nature that got us awestruck, I was also amazed by the walkway itself. For something of that length and height to be constructed, a lot of conditions need to be made, calculations made and careful selection of the site and materials for the structure.

So today, let’s quickly take a look at some of the things considered to build an engineering beauty such as a canopy walkway. Specifically, the types of materials employed.

The canopy walkway is designed to the form of a catenary bridge i.e. resembling a rope hanging on two supports at both ends. Because of the length and height the walkway covers, there are more than one catenaries that make up the whole walkway and of course more than one support towers which also serves as landing areas between each length of catenary.

One of the most important part of walkways (or suspension bridges) such as this is the support towers. These are the parts that hold on to the suspended “rope” bridges. With reference to the walkway at the Lekki Conservation center, let’s highlight some of the things to be considered before selecting the material used to build such a structure.

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• Because people would be walking on the catenaries and thus their weight would be on the walk way, there is need to suspend the walkways by a rope that has high tensile strength. i.e. a rope that can be exerted to pull or stretch without snapping. This is one of the most important parts of the walkway as it is used to hold the bridges to the support towers and also the support towers to the ground. In this case, the rope cannot be the normal fiber ropes we know, metal cables are the ideal (preferably stainless steel cables with high tensile strength).

• Because the site for this particular walkway is swampy (mostly wet) the support towers and all the metallic parts need to be made from a material that is highly corrosion resistant. Corrosion is not a friendly phenomenon and shouldn’t be allowed to occur in such structures. As a result, stainless steel is also the choice material

• Also, the walkway would need to have hand rails to help the occupants keep balance and also to protect them on both sides. This time around, thick fiber ropes should do the trick (which did) .

• walking the length of each catenary, there is the need to use a material that could support the weight of a human and wouldn’t degrade over time. Although wood might be a fancy choice, going for metallic option would be more ideal. In this case, stainless steel takes the price once again.

Maybe you might be wondering what made stainless steel a good option for such wet environment well, this is because of the alloying element present in the steel - Chromium. The Chromium in the steel actually creates a thin layer of oxide around the metal. As thin as this film is, it is enough to make the whole metal resistant to corrosion and hence, stainless!

Although stainless steel is resistant to a whole lot of corrosive environment, it would still corrode under some but hey, it really does its job and we all know that.

These and a whole lot more factors would have been considered before erecting such beautiful structure.

The walk on the walkway was sincerely a very pleasant experience and I doubt if I would forget in a long while. The screams (mostly from @sogless), the swaying and sagging of the bridge as we walked through and the beauty of the scenery were simply breath taking.

After the walk, we proceeded to the “family park” where we did some talking. We all introduced ourselves and talked about steemit related issues after which we proceeded to take a look at the surrounding wildlife.

Climbing the tree house

There were other side attractions at the park such as floor games, volley ball court and the likes but time would not permit us to use any. As we proceeded out of the reserve, we saw a tree house which we all decided to climb to the top, it was 21 meters high! Trust me, it was another awesome experience (although it resulted in a leg ache, it was still worth it). Climbing the canopy walk and the tree house proved to me that I am not afraid of height and made me see nature from a whole new perspective. The view was spectacular!

After that, we then proceeded to take pictures before everyone left for their homes. Although we all wished we could stay a little while, time was not our friend and traffic in that part of Lagos is not a friendly one so, we had no choice. I in particular got home at about 8:30pm that day.

By and large, the meetup was quite an experience and sincerely, I was overwhelmed by the love and friendship in the stemng community. The fact that people came from different parts of the country also was something to reckon with. The fun we had, the laughter and the things we learnt made the meetup a success. For me, seeing the faces behind the keyboard was a good one as someone said and I quote; “At least we would know that we are chatting with humans”. A big thank you to @steemstem and @stemng for making this meetup a success!

Ref
canopy meg
canopy access
wiki-LCC
wiki -suspension bridge