71
march 2015
international
construction
CRANES
Lifting innovation
BoomBooster
Besides these innovations, the last decade or so has seen a clear
trend in the crane industry towards higher and higher lifting
capacities. In the early 2000s, a 500 tonne crane might be
consideredbig,orbeat the topof amanufacturer’s
range. But these days you can buy a 3,000 tonne
or even a 4,000 tonne crane ‘off the shelf’.
This trend has been due to specific types of
work. One area is the petrochemical industry,
where building new plants can require the lifting
and placing of extremely large pre-fabricated
vessels. The power sector is another where there
are similar requirements, particularly nuclear
power plant construction.
But a newer application is the wind energy
sector, where there is a need to lift heavy nacelles
(generator units) to the top of tall masts. And as
the sector has grown inmaturity, windmills have
got bigger andmore powerful, which has meant
cranes have been needed to lift heavier loads to
greater heights.
A new product to address this need is Terex Cranes’ Boom
Buster, which is an enhancement system for its 1,600 tonne
capacity CC 8800-1 lattice boom crawler crane. Reminiscent of
Liebherr’s P boom, which was launched a few years earlier, the
BoomBooster is designed to combat the limiting factor of lateral
deflection in a crane’s boom. It does this by widening the load
bearing chords of the boom, andTerex says it ismost effective at
steepboom angleswith a luffing jib.
The first customer for this systemwas Belgium-based heavy lift
specialist Sarens. Company director Hendrik Sarens said, “For
a lift application with 156 metres of main boom, the standard
One of the eye-catching new cranes at Bauma China
was the new 800 tonne capacity QAY800 eight-axle all-
terrain from Zoomlion.
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