Sandwich composite tanks for Rio City Aquarium

Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro city will build the largest marine aquarium in Latinamerica as part of a plan to revitalize the city. The aquarium is located in the port area of the city, near the Guanabara Bay, will have a total floor area of 27,000 square meters and will house 12,000 animals from 400 different freshwater and saltwater species, including sharks and rays. City officials anticipate the construction will require an estimated investment of 60 million US dollars.

Barracuda Composites engineering division designed a total of 27 sandwich composite tanks using finite element analysis. The tanks containing a total of 5 million liters of water (1.3 million gallons) will be built by resin infusion method with vinylester resin and glass fabrics. The large tanks include flow modeling using Polyworx software.

The aquarium was conceived not only to be a tourist attraction, but also to promote conservation of biodiversity, environmental education and marine biology research. The project is expected to be finished by 2014 and is estimated to be able to attract 1.5 million visitors per year.

More information: www.barracudacomposites.com.br