Zoomlion

ZOOMLION LAUNCHES 450 TONNE CAPACITY TOWER CRANE

Zoomlion releases world’s largest top-slewing tower crane, leading the era of super-large tower cranes.

ACCORDING TO ZOOMLION, THE RECENTLY

released W12000-450 is the world’s largest top-slewing tower crane. The W12000-450 rolled off the assembly line at the Intelligent Tower Crane Factory of Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co., Ltd. in Changde, Hunan Province, China. Zoomlion especially designed and built the model for the world’s largest road-rail cable-stayed bridge project, the Changzhou-Taizhou Yangtze River Bridge, integrating an expressway, ordinary highway, and inter-city railway.

The W12000-450 weighs in at 4,000t, with a rated load moment of 12,000 tonnemetres. It’s the world’s fi rst top-slewing tower crane, exceeding 10,000 tonnemetres, and has a maximum lifting weight of 450t and maximum lifting height of 400 metres, which is the equivalent of lifting 300 cars to a level of 130 fl oors in one lift.

The key technologies of building super-large tower cranes are complex, with high requirements for safety and reliability. Zoomlion has taken on the challenges of technological innovation and manufacturing requirements to venture into the unknown and set new records.

“In the absence of structural patterns to follow, we re-established a calculation platform for structural rigidity, stability, and modal analysis,” said Tang Shaofang, vice president of Zoomlion and general manager of Zoomlion Construction Hoisting Machinery Company.

“The W12000-450 tower crane has adopted several of Zoomlion’s selfdeveloped technologies, including full penetration T-joint welding technology, and conquered technical diffi culties such as ultra-thick plate weld cracking, enabling the W12000-450 to not only achieve super strong lifting performances reaching the 10,000-tonne-metre level, but also guarantee safety and reliability throughout the processes of transporting, assembly/ disassembly, and operation,” he said.

The W12000-450 is produced in the world’s largest Intelligent Tower Crane Factory. According to plans, the factory will be manufacturing construction hoisting machinery products covering the range from 80 to 20,000 tonne-metres. It is fully digitalised to integrate big data analysis, industrial internet, information systems, visualisation, and more to achieve full-coverage networking and manmachine interaction.

Through intelligent, fl exible assembly tools, the W12000-450 was manufactured in four months, compared to traditional manufacturing technology that would take at least 12 months.

According to Zoomlion, the recently released W12000450 is the world’s largest top-slewing tower crane.

Zoomlion especially designed and built the model for the world’s largest road-rail cablestayed bridge project.

In terms of general structure, Zoomlion has adopted a main flat top plus auxiliary luffing-jib mode with a L500A-32 mounted on the top of W12000-450 to ensure efficient installation. Since the job site has limited space for tower crane layout, Zoomlion designed a new type of ‘panelised’ tower section with a centre distance of only six metres.

With this recently designed tower section, the load capacity is ensured and the production and processing methodology facilitated. What’ s more, the new tower sections make installation and transportation of the tower easier and more convenient.

Zoomlion has adopted high-strength materials for the W12000-450 to reduce the dead weight of the jib. It can withstand large lifting moments and large lifting weights, and, at the same time, bear the inertial force in the slewing plane and the lateral wind load.

The connection between the tower section and the lower support is a completely unprecedented design, which Zoomlion calls eight pillars. This design greatly reduces the transportation requirements, and reduces the difficulties involved in manufacturing and transporting the lower support.

In addition to the required deep accumulation of technical information through research and development, the design and manufacturing of the W12000450 presented a number of challenges.

This giant involves almost 4,000t of steel. With the maximum size of a single piece being 14m x 6m x 6m, with a maximum weight of 66t, the total length of the weld seam is 5.8 kilometres. All this meant Zoomlion was faced with huge challenges around designing, welding, and manufacturing such a high-precision tower crane, said Tang.

“It takes about four months to complete the production of the entire crane.”

“In Zoomlion’s Intelligent Tower Crane Factory’s super-large tower crane workshop, we adopted a digital welding machine equipped with T-joint full penetration welding technology to overcome the technical problem of ultrathick plates welding cracking,” he said.

“We invested in more than 10 highprecision CNC machining centres to complete the precision machining of super-long, super-wide, and super-heavy components. We have built a super-large water-based coating line to ensure that there are no dead corners in the coating and the coating can reach the marine environment anti-corrosion level. After 136 days and nights of dedicated work from 200 craftsmen in the six super-large work shops, this miraculous tower crane was successfully launched.

“By applying intelligent flexible jigs, the lead time can be significantly shortened. It takes about four months to complete the production of the entire crane. Compare this with traditional manufacturing processes, where the lead time will be at least 12 months. According to the planned product roll out, the Zoomlion Intelligent Tower Crane Factory will be able to produce a full range of construction hoisting machinery products covering 80tm to 20,000tm,” said Tang.

The demand for super-large tower cranes is increasing as construction parts become heavier, buildings are taller, and bridges spans wider. The launch of W12000-450 will not only bring the latest solution for heavy industries, but also showcase Zoomlion’s industry leading capabilities in the research and development, and design and manufacture, of large tower cranes.

For more information on Zoomlion products visit the website nationwidemachinerygroup.com.au