IN FOCUS / COSMO CRANES
INTERNAL STACKER CRANE: AN AUSTRALIAN FIRST Cosmo Cranes has installed a Terex Internal Climbing System HD12 (for use with a CTL 340-24 luffing jib tower crane) which is a first for the Australian crane industry and only the second time it’s been employed in the world. THE PROJECT IS THE LENNOX, CHURCH Street, Parramatta. It’s a 48-storey building, 176m in height. The crane system started in the lift pit below basement level eight and it is providing all the hook work for the job. It’s the sole crane on the project and operating six days a week, so the builder is getting good use from it.
The design of this system with the supporting structure means it is quicker to climb. 44 / CAL July 2019
Damian Hibbert is a civil structural engineer specialising in construction engineering including temporary works, materials handling equipment, as well as equipment that’s found on a construction site to assist in the construction of the building including staging installation works and other structural works outside the scope of the building engineer. He designed the tower crane climbing system’s support structures. “One of my clients is Cosmo Cranes and this project is using an internal climbing system HD19 from Terex. It hasn’t been used in Australia before,” he said. “It is a project that required a tower crane using an internal climbing system to erect the tower inside the building and we looked at a few different options. With the size of the job it was only really a one-crane job. To install a tower crane with an external climbing system up the building was considered too expensive and would delay finishes. There are too many towers, too many ties and we were fairly limited with where we could secure the crane on the outside,” said Hibbert. “The obvious solution was to use a tower crane with an internal climbing system and recover it with a roof-top crane at the end of the project. This would be more cost effective than running with a tower crane using an external climbing system,” he said. “We are quite limited with space in the core with this project. It’s fairly tight, so a lot of the typical internal climbers couldn’t fit so we looked at a few options with Cosmo Cranes and different manufacturers with the
Internal climbers are governed by deflection and how much clearance there is.
climbing system itself.” It was always intended to put the Terex CTL 340-24 luffing jib tower crane on top, it was just whether the project required a Terex Comedil internal or external climbing system. After researching the options and looking at the way the system works, it was decided the internal climbing system HD19 would be perfect. It’s quite quick to stage the tower-crane climbing system’s support structure, which is adaptable for future jobs, so there is longevity in the support structure. In essence, the internal climbing is a ladder climber, unlike the majority of systems in Australia, which are beam climbers. With a ladder climber, two ladders are hung each side of a tower section. These are hung from just underneath the internal climbing system’s support structure. They are hung down each side of the tower section and the crane will use them to “climb” itself up the ladder. It’s a hanging ladder
