Capable of lifting 500 cars to 130 floors with its 20,000 tonne-meter rated torque, 720-ton capacity and 1,312-foot height, Chinese manufacturer Zoomlion says its new R2000-720 has broken the record for the world’s largest tower crane.
The behemoth rolled off Zoomlion’s production line on April 20, taking just eight months from design to production at the company’s factory in Changde. It will be used in the construction of the Ma'anshan Yangtze River Highway-Railway Bridge, the world's largest spanning three-tower cable-stayed bridge.
"R2000-720 has made innovations and breakthroughs in balancing weight, structure, intelligent control and other technologies, solving multiple global challenges for ultra-large tower cranes under extremely complex working conditions, such as strong wind, high humidity and heavy load, meaning it's not just the world's largest, but also strongest tower crane," said a spokesperson for Zoomlion.
The crane uses mobile balancing weight technology to accurately move with hoisting torque, improving hoisting performance by over 60%, the company says.
The design features a high load-bearing, lightweight structure and a heavy-duty split structure, reducing the upper structure of tower cranes by more than 20% compared to traditional designs. This makes transportation, installation and disassembly easier, Zoomlion says.
With 305 patents on the machine, Zoomlion says it has invested heavily in intelligent control technology to improve the crane’s responsiveness. An advanced control system on the R2000-720 uses 50 intelligent technologies to achieve a millisecond response, the company says.
No additional machine specifications were revealed. Zoomlion also debuted the world’s largest tonnage all-terrain crane in July 2022.
It seems only fitting that the world’s largest tower crane will work on what will become the world’s longest continuous cable-stayed deck at nearly 2 miles, and the two main spans will get the world record for longest cable-stayed span at .7 miles, according to Bridge Design & Engineering.
Construction on the 6-mile-long bridge in the Anhui Province began in August 2020. Work on the main bridge section began this year. It will become the sixth Yangtze River highway and railway bridge on the 800-mile Anhui River, according to Seetao. It will consist of upper and lower decks, with the upper serving as a six-lane expressway and the lower as a four-track railway for high-speed trains.
