Liebherr crane completes fiddly bridge job in Germany
Crawler crane used to hoist 355-tonne steel railway bridge in constricted conditions
A Liebherr crawler crane was used in to install a railway bridge in constricted conditions in Baden-Württemberg, in south-west Germany.
The installation presented a whole series of challenges, with very little space for the crawler to hoist the 355-tonne steel bridge.
Rental company Riga-Mainz was awarded the job as it was the only company able to propose a lift solution with only a single crane.
Initial proposals to use two cranes to position the bridge were rejected, since this would have required the enormous truss construction to be stored between the cranes for the duration of the set-up work. However, as the project was already running late, the job had to be handled quickly.
The Riga-Mainz team set up the Liebherr LR 1600/2 crawler crane on two massive reinforced concrete ramps. Company boss Uwe Langer, who was also responsible for planning the foundation, had a dozen piles driven into the site for this purpose down to a depth of up to 13 metres, since the ramp had to withstand a calculated crawler pressure of 507 kilonewton per square metre.
The night before the bridge was hoisted, the 40 metre truss construction was transported from the assembly site to the construction site on two parallel self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) with ten axles each.
To thread the two supports for securing the handling equipment through the trusses, the experts from Mainz fitted an extension on one side of each of them. This enabled a support crane on the other side of the bridge to handle them and draw the main support into the structure.
With the cross beam and attachment equipment the LR 1600/2 hoisted a total of 402 tonnes. The crawler crane was fitted with a total of 565 tonnes of ballast for the hoist. Slowly the crawlers reversed around ten metres until finally the bridge was positioned with pinpoint accuracy on the new abutments.
Two other Liebherr cranes, an LTM 1200-5.1 and an LTF 1045-4.1, were used for set-up and support work.
