Moog at Wimbledon

2nd Quarter 2012 Electrical switching & drive systems & components

This challenging and high profile project required great expertise in electric actuation as well as the highest level of project management. It involved creating a control architecture for the actuated elements of a moving roof on the Centre Court at Wimbledon.

The 1212 ton retractable roof consists of two sections, which together support 5200 square metres of fabric when deployed above the centre court. Moog’s technology moves the two sections of roof along two sets of parallel rails over a span of 77 metres – within a tolerance of 2 to 3 millimetres – in under 10 minutes. The retractable roof’s 10 trusses each weigh 121 tons.

To generate the force to open and close the roof so precisely and efficiently, Moog designed a solution that includes 148 axes of control, comprising 108 electric actuators (35 tonne and 14 tonne force capability) and 40 servomotors, which power wheeled carriages running on the rails. Each axis requires a corresponding servodrive as well as 20 real-time Moog Servo Controllers (MSC) and 20 programmable logic controllers (PLCs) with software, all of which are housed in 40 control cabinets. Moog equipment and software provides closed-loop control for the roof movement, which includes operating the trusses’ end arms, restraint arms and carriages, while the PLCs provide the supervisory and data acquisition element.

“This was a unique challenge that brought together engineers from our facilities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the United States to design a motion control solution that is highly efficient and reliable, by drawing on our 25 years of experience designing electric actuation solutions for motion control,” said Steve Huckvale, president of Moog Industrial Group.

For more information contact Willie Steyn, Moog, +27 (0)12 653 6768, [email protected], www.moog.com

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