Strong piece - Blade lifter in action
December 15, 2015 | Markus Lackner
In October, Felbermayr commenced construction of five wind turbines in north western Romania. Managing Director Peter Stöttinger was responsiblefor the procedural concept for this demanding,prestige project.The necessary components were received in Constantaon the coastof the Black Sea and transported about 700 kilometres to the holding store located at 1,200 metres above sea level. The incoming shipments to the holding store were unloaded with two mobile cranes. The road to the 1,800 meter high construction site led through a forest road that had been temporarily prepared for transporting the components. According to branch manager Christian Krieger, a major challenge was transporting the 44.5 metre long wind turbine blades.
The ascent had gradients of up to 16 percent and inclines of 20 percent, but these could be overcome by using a so called blade lifter. Krieger determined it would not be possible without the blade lifter. In order to achieve the necessary traction, the blade lifter was mounted on a eight-axle self-propelled transporter. However, despite all these measures, a journey of eight hours for the 15 kilometre route had to be taken into account for each blade. The transport ofthe heavy tower segments, weighing upto 60 tonnes was carried out mainly bya 14 axle self-propelled transporter. The 72 tonne nacelle and the smaller tower sections were transported to the alpine construction site with a 10 axle THP trailer. Joining the five tower sections wascarried out with an LR1600. For this, thecrane was equipped with a 105 metremain boom and a twelve metre luffing jib, as well as 255 tonnes of ballast. The finally hub height of the generators reaches 105 metres.
