In June this year, the company’s Russian sales office signed a contract with Russian oil company Lukoil’s subsidiary, Lukoil-Kaliningradmorneft (LKMN), to deliver the TCC 14000-400 D Litronic, its first combined mobile harbour/offshore crane, by December 2012.
Liebherr says the 400t TCC14000-400 D Litronic’s design was developed from current technology already used in some of its maritime division’s other products, however its undercarriage is a newly designed steel fabrication consisting of four outriggers mounted upon a central X-shaped structure.
From Liebherr Nenzing’s mobile harbour crane line, the TCC14000-400 D Litronic borrows the firm’s patented Litronic control technology along with 48 of the conventional mobile harbor crane wheel sets for travelling operation.
Talking to Cranes Today at Liebherr’s Nenzing facility in May, Liebherr Nenzing’s head of marketing, Wolfgang Pfister, explained the rationale behind the design, commenting, “More and more ports are requesting cranes with lifting capacities far above the average lifting capacity of conventional mobile harbour cranes. This demand comes as a result of the of the growing offshore wind farm industry.
“We had one specific customer that was asking for a super heavy lift mobile harbour crane, a lift crane that is still mobile in the port, but can lift huge capacities. At a port you need to lift high loads at a high radius, and a mobile crane loses capacity drastically at longer radii. A crawler cannot work in a port because it would cause damage to the existing berth structure.”
“So the idea was to take a big offshore crane and put it on a mobile undercarriage, because the offshore crane would have the basic structure to lift high capacities. You don’t need to design a new crane, and you just need to put it on a bigger mobile undercarriage, but the undercarriage would be a completely new one.
“This is a mixture of a strong slewing crane, an offshore crane or a ship crane, put on a mobile undercarriage.”
The TCC 14000-400 D Litronic has a maximum outreach of 70m with a maximum under hook height of 68m.
Even with a dead weight of 1,100t Liebherr says the 48 wheel sets and large supporting pads help the crane achieve ground pressure values that rival a mobile harbour cranes whether travelling or during operation.
During land-based operation it is propped up on support units at the end of each outrigger to provide a support base measuring 22m x22m. However, the crane can be driven onto a floating barge and fixed to the barge for operation as a typical offshore crane.
