See Dubai from a new perspective – 250m up in the sky! The world’s largest and tallest observation wheel, Ain Dubai is set to welcome the public on 21 October. Its name meaning “Dubai Eye” in Arabic, will truly let you see some of Dubai’s landmarks such as Burj Al Arab, Palm Jumeirah, Burj Khalifa, Dubai Marina, and many more – in a new way.
The structure is located on Bluewaters Island with each leg measuring 126m high and its weight equivalent to four A380 aircraft. Ain Dubai is more than an elevated vantage point for transforming city perspectives; its base serves as an entertainment zone offering unforgettable social and celebratory experiences – a must-visit attraction for all.
The making of Ain Dubai
Ain Dubai was first announced in February 2013 and constructions followed in May 2015. The anticipated completion date of the project was early to mid-2019, however, the date was later pushed to October 2020, which was then pushed even further back another year due to the pandemic.
According to Darren Brooke, senior technical director at WSP (Ain Dubai’s lead consultant architect), “[This has] the area of four times a standard wheel, [so] we’ve had to put a lot more emphasis in the design, making sure that the design approach is refined as much as we possibly can, while still staying within the design standards. But very much refining that to actually get to an efficient, cost-effective design.”
The structure used 11,200 tons of steel to build and required 2,500 tons of maximum jacking force to erect the wheel.
If the spokes that hold the wheel in place were placed together end-on-end, they would stretch from Dubai all the way to Cairo. It consists of 192 spokes each made of 107 separate 9mm thick wires. The wheel’s hub and spindle weigh 1,805 tons while the combined weight of the rim and the 48 passenger cabins is 7,500 tons.
Each of the cabins is designed to fit 40 people, meaning 1,750 can ride Ain Dubai at any given time.
Experts from all over the world were pulled in order to bring all this to fruition. Consultants from South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, France, the UK, and Italy all contributed to crucial aspects of the design. Former technical director for the London Eye, Kevin Dyer was also taken in as Operation Director for Ain Dubai.
Together, these great minds designed Ain Dubai to last 300,000 cycles or 60 years. In fact, experts from Politecnico di Milano (who also worked on the London Eye) worked on the analysis of the cables and stress cycles of the structure and they have managed to “double the life of the cables.”
“The forces each of those cables has got is 300 tons of load at their peak. Each of those 192 cables come in to those spindles, or into that hub. So you’ve got huge concentration of force,” Brooke said.
The world’s largest observation wheel
There are three different types of cabin in a 38-minute rotation: starting from AED 130, the standard option which is the observation cabins, AED 175 for the social experiences cabin which is a VIP option with a bar in the center of the pod, and AED 1,800 for the private cabins which can be booked for special occasions and offer three-course dinners over two rotations of the wheel.
For more information, book here.