Motion Control Critical to One-of-a-Kind Stage
World's largest water-based show - House of Dancing Water - has a very small margin of error.Although veteran entertainment producer Patrice Bilodeau and designer Mark Labelle are well know in the industry for overcoming difficult engineering challenges, they had never encountered anything as large as the City of Dreams and Franco Dragone Entertainment Group’s House of Dancing Water (Macau, China).
The House of Dancing Water Theater holds approximately 2,000 seats and is a 270 degree theater-in-the- round housing the world’s largest commercial pool which is 160 feet in diameter and 26 feet deep. It holds 3.7 million gallons of water.
Labelle developed the concept of lifting the 7497-sq.-ft stage out of the water, thereby converting an aquatic area into a solid floor for performers to use as a stage.
“No one had ever done anything like this before,” says Bilodeau.
To support Labelle’s concept, Jacek Kaminski P. Eng. Chief Engineer and Eng. Manager for City of Dreams Project for Handling Specialty Manufacturing Ltd. (Grimsby, Ontario) and other engineers designed, manufactured, and installed an underwater stage lift system, which has a 805,000 lb. capacity (static load). Eight platform stage lifts travel vertically 26 feet underwater and then rise 1 foot above water to convert the aquatic stage to a solid dry floor. The total area of the 8 main platform stage lifts is 6,441 sq. ft.
Since the pool is surrounded by theater seating, three vomintory lifts were required to move actors on and off the stage. These lifts travel one metre below water and rise one metre above water in order to accommodate underwater and above water props and performances.
A vomitory lift is the lift system that runs from the edge of the stage pool area (on-stage), down the exit/ entry corridors to the on-stage from off-stage or back stage area. It serves as a dry walkway for incoming performers and then disappears into the water so that Sea Doos or boats can travel from off-stage to on-stage. There are three corridors or Vomitories in this theatre located at 3, 6, 9 o’clock where 12 o’clock is the proscenium. The total area of the 3 vomitory lifts is 1,056 sq. ft, the dynamic capacity is 52,800 lbs, and the static capacity is 132,000 lbs.
Handling Specialty engineered and installed all of the systems required to complete the controls, hydraulics, structure, skirting, guides, and astragals. Astragals are shear zone safety protection devices that are installed all around the underside of every edge of every lift. Their purpose is to immediate halt motion should the edge of any lift encounter an obstacle such as a piece of scenery or a performer.
Six hydraulic power units from Parker Hannifin (Mayfield Heights, OH) are used to actuate the lifts. An electronic controls system enables the lifts to move independently or in synchronization. The total dynamic capacity of the main lifts is 322,000 lb.
The control system is continuously fed with information from each cylinder to tell it where they are in their stroke path. The computers can receive the signals and instantly alter the flow of fluids into the cylinders so as to keep them all level or to run any number at different speeds with different targets and so on.
“All of the safety mechanisms such as the astragals, are monitored in real time with the computers so that operators know the system is in a safe operating condition,” says Tom Beach, president of Handling Specialty. “The computers also can change the flow rate and the speed of the lifts in either direction so operators can create very special EFX with the motion control.”
Electronic probes integral of the cylinders provide the I/O feedback that the computers need in order to maintain full control of speed, distance, ramping, targets or levelness. One of the greatest engineering challenges, according to Bilodeau, was having the control system perform reliably over time.
“We have two shows per day and operate five days per week,” explains Bilodeau. “Every time the stage moves, the control system has to operate with a precision of within 5 mm.”
RMC150E series of controllers from Delta Computer Systems (Battle Ground, WA) were chosen to perform the task of controlling the 32 hydraulic cylinders that move the sections of the main stage in the theater. “The controller provided many feedback options and were able to interface with our magnetostrictive linear displacement transducers without the need for signal conditioners,” says Beach. “The software provided was found to be user friendly and a very powerful setup and tuning tool.”
While the electromechanical motion controllers used by Handling Specialty in the past considered only speed and position, the Delta Computer Systems controller now permitted pressure to be part of the equation and anticipated the motion of a hydraulic system.
Read more about this and other Entertainment Engineering topics in our online magazine!
Posted by Bruce at 19 Oct 2011 
Categories: Entertainment Engineering
Tags: Motion control House of Dancing Water Patrice Bilodeau Mark Labelle City of Dreams Franco Dragone Entertainment Group Macau China convertible stage underwater stage water theater vomitory lift hydraulic lifts Parker Hannifin Handling Specialty Tom Beach Delta Computer Systems hydraulic cylinders
Categories: Entertainment Engineering
Tags: Motion control House of Dancing Water Patrice Bilodeau Mark Labelle City of Dreams Franco Dragone Entertainment Group Macau China convertible stage underwater stage water theater vomitory lift hydraulic lifts Parker Hannifin Handling Specialty Tom Beach Delta Computer Systems hydraulic cylinders
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