Tennis Preventing damage to electrical cables: Wimbledon's centre court roof glides safely with energy chains

摘要

When the roof first glided over Wimbledon's illustrious Centre Court on 29th June 2009, allowing the fourth round singles match between Amelie Mauresmo and Dinara Safina to continue, it was the landmark occasion for the world's most prestigious tennis tournament. The Grand Slam Championship, which enjoys huge global television audiences, was often at the mercy of Britain's unpredictable and inclement weather. With hundreds of millions of viewers tuning in around the world the All England Club needed to find a solution. The organisers thought long and hard before deciding to build a retracting roof over one of sport's most iconic venues, but the roof over the Centre Court was to be no ordinary roof. Constraints of space, a desire to minimise noise and a requirement for it to blend into the historic venue all required a novel solution. "There are plenty of retractable roofs on sporting stadiums, but to date the majority have been flat roofs," explains John Biggin, project manager at mechanical engineers SCX Special Projects Ltd, the firm chosen to design and build the retractable roof moving parts and control systems. "The Centre Court roof was to be a concertina roof; sliding roofs lack the flexibility of this offering. If you have a flat roof you need the space to move it into when you open it and we didn't have that at Wimbledon. So the concertina type was the way to go."