Amy J. Born | July 08, 2022
XCMG’s XGT15000-600S, the world’s largest tower crane, rolls off the assembly line. Source: XCMG
The world’s largest tower crane, the XGT15000-600S, came off the assembly line in China in early June 2022. The model was developed as a joint project by XCMG and China Major Bridge Engineering Co. Ltd to meet increasing demand for large-scale modular bridge construction.
The XGT15000-600S super tower crane will meet the construction requirements for mega-scale bridge construction projects such as Chantal Yangtze River Bridge (the world’s largest diamond-type cable-stayed bridge) and the Chao-Ma railway bridge of Ma’anshan Yangtze River bridge for both railway and highway. These include heavy lifting components, wide construction ranges and high working heights.
The tower crane’s design is based on the S series tower crane technology platform. Its core advantages include high safety level, intelligent technology and strong functionality, as well as high quality, precise modules and exceptional performance. The crane combines the design of a flat head main tower, a boom auxiliary tower and a manned elevator. Among its technical specification advantages are:
– Rated lifting moment: 15,000 tons-meter
– Maximum lifting weight: 600 tons
– Independent lifting height: 92.5 meters
– Maximum lifting height with attachment: 400+ meters
– Maximum lifting speed: 31 meters/minute
– Level 12 typhoon resistance in non-working state
“Through a decade of continuous exploration and development, XCMG has successfully created the XGT15000-600S super tower crane with over 60 core technology breakthroughs, we have achieved 10 world firsts and set 10 world records. The weight of the tower crane is 4,000 tons, and that’s the equivalent of 100 regular tower cranes,” said Wang Min, chairman and CEO of XCMG.
Development of the XGT15000-600S has overcome more than 20 of the top technical bottlenecks through industry-leading technological capability. The manufacturing, installation and transportation problems previously associated with super large lifting booms have been solved through the crane’s dual-boom modular parallel combination technology. Limited installation space and linkage design issues for 600-ton super rope capacity have been solved with the world’s first four-bar linkage double amplitude cooperative operation technology. The problem of steel wire rope twisting with super high lifting height was resolved with the first hoisting wire rope space layout technology.
The XGT15000-600S has completed over 2,000 lifting tests and 1,440 hours of non-stop testing to begin this new era in the development of super-scale tower cranes.
