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Case Study

Here are three representative case studies of gantry crane's application in construction industry. They embrace application cases in building construction, infrastructure construction and hydraulic dam construction. These studies provide some valuable perspectives of what gantry cranes can do in construction operations.

01

High-Rise Building —— Marina Bay Sands
Marina Bay Sands is a luxury hotel built in Sinapore, which has remarkable features of a skypark placed on top of the three main buildings. The skypark of Marina Bay Sands is made up of 14 giant steel components, and the heavist components weigh as much as 1400 tons. At such a height lifting those heavy and large components can be extremely difficult for tower cranes or other rotation cranes. Thus engineers turn to gantry crane for help. They set a double-cantilevered crane on top of the main building with bridge girders  extending outwards evenly to lift two symmetrical heavy components simultaneously. Hydraulic jacks are used as power with specialized steel wires and drums as gearing methods.
This lifting method avoids the complexity of setting counterweights, which can be itself a big problem at such an operation height. The gantry crane used here demonstrates its advantages in dealing with objects with large dimensions because it is convenient to set multiple lifting points in a gantry, which can help keep the objects stable while lifting. In fact, in this case, the lifting operation of two main 1400-ton components are suspended for three hours because of a thunderstorm attack, and they are secured in place stably by the gantry. 
From the 38'00" of this video, you can find an illustration of how they use gantry cranes to lift the steel components

02

Subway Terminal —— Guangzhou Subway 13 Line
Many Chinese Cities are undergoing massive subway construction currently and Guangzhou is a typical one. In Subway construction, the gantry cranes are widely adopted and configured at the terminal site. The main purpose of using gantry crane in such situations is because of its effeciency in site coverage proportion. 
The subway terminals are generally in rectangular shapes and usually set in the busiest areas of a city, and no matter what kind of tunneling methods are adopted, either excavation&covering or shielded tunnel boring, the main site space will become unavailable for material staging and equipment setting. Most of equipment and staging materail need to use the narrow strip space on the margins beside the tunnel path. In such cases, a gantry crane is very desirable. 
First, gantry crane only takes a small space for its leg base and moving tracks, but it can cover the entire terminal region with highly competitive lifting capcacity. As the above picture shows, the width of a subway workzone can be too long for a mobile crane or a rotation crane, but not for the gantry crane. In addition, in busy streets, the margin beside the excavation area can be very small for other crane types to work.
Second, setting one gantry crane can take care of almost all lifting operations required in subway construction. For shielded tunnel boring operation, the gantry crane can be used to lift prefabricated components in the shaft, and meanwhile lift excavated rock and soil out of the shaft; for excavation&covering operation, the gantry crane can be used to lift steel supporting members for soil retention. And it can serve the lifting work of the terminal at the same time, so although more expensive, setting one gantry crane can be very cost efficient.

03

Hydropower Station —— Zipingpu Hydropower Dam

 

 

The gantry crane used in hydropower station construction is mainly for lifting the dam water gate. But it can also be used in installation operation like the lifting and setting of generator units. Gantry cranes used in hydro-dams are usually meant to be a permanent equipment accompanying the water gate and ship gate. So it can be used very frequently and thus requires structural material of higher durability. As you can see in the above picture, this type of gantry has relatively small span, typically between 8m and 16m, and its lifting capacity ranges from 80 tons to 500 tons. The lifting speed is low, usually from1m/min to 5m/min.
 

© 2015 by Lisheng Yang. 

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