Table of Contents
The number of cars and other vehicles is increasing every year, which leads to problems associated with the capacity of existing roads and highways. These problems are especially acute in countries, for example, in China, where the pace of industrial development and the growth of the welfare of the population exceed the growth rate of transport infrastructure.
The important components of this infrastructure are bridges, viaducts, and interchanges, which used to be built primarily with the use of manual labor with the help of heavy construction equipment. But now this state of affairs is unlikely satisfies anyone and people use huge specialized machines for the construction of bridges. We will tell about one of them.
The machine under discussion is called SLJ900/32 or Segmental Bridge Launching Machine – SLJ900/32 bridge girder erection monster machine. It is designed to build long bridges consisting of a large number of spans.
The works on moving, installing, and securing the finished segments of the bridge to the pre-installed supports are on the shoulders of this machine. It should be noted that the construction of a bridge with the help of such a machine still requires manual labor, but its quantity and severity are incommensurably smaller in comparison with the technologies used in the past century.
Dimensions
The SLJ900/32 bridge girder erection mega machine, the length of which is about 91 meters (300 feet), the width is 7.4 meters (24 feet), the height is 9 meters, and the weight is about 580 tons, is capable of laying 700-750 bridges’ spans during its “life” although more than 40 percent of such machines were able to lay move than 1000 bridges’ spans, each weighing from 800 to 950 tons.
According to the information from the edition “Bridge Design & Engineering”, such machines in recent years have become widespread in not only China but also all over the world. The first of these machines was created unique, oriented at the construction of a particular building. “The first machines were unique, they had their own design, which corresponded to the length of the span of the bridge, the radius of bending, other structural features of the constructed structure, and the features of the construction site” Yabin Liu and Fuchun Yuan told.
Using multiple machines
In the most complex projects, several similar machines of various designs are required, which leads to a significant rise in the cost of the construction process, but modern engineers found technical solutions that make machines more or less universal, and their design can be quickly redrawn to fit features of this or that project.
Monster machines are exclusive machines, mechanisms, and devices all over the world.