FHEC Jinping No. 2, the self-elevating rubble leveling barge by ZPMC for CCCC First Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd. (CCCC-FHEC) was launched in Nantong on April 9th, another important equipment for China. The localization is made on the design and manufacturing of the barge, as the core equipment for the construction of Shenzhen-Zhongshan Highway, a super project. It was called as the 3D printer for the deep-water rubble pavement for its high efficiency and automation in the pavement.
Shenzhen-Zhongshan Highway connecting the east and west banks of Zhujiang is the traffic hub for the industrial transfer of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It is a super large project of bridge, island, tunnel and underground connection in the world, with the seabed immersed tube tunnel of 6.8km approximately. It is the first 2-way 8-lane steel shell concrete immersed tunnel in the world, featuring super width, variable width, immersed depth, large back silting quantity and poor stratum stability in excavation, making unprecedented scale and technical difficulty.
The immersed foundation leveling is necessary key process for the construction of the seabed tunnel and the rubble leveling barge for laying immersed tube section is an essential core equipment. ZPMC once manufactured Jinping No. 1 Barge for CCCC-FHEC for the construction of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, providing the equipment support for the national projects and filling the blank of the same type of vessels in China successfully. Compared with Jinping No. 1 Barge, the second barge has better performance, specifications and localization with multiple performances leading in the globe.
The Barge is the largest in the world with the main body of a homocentric square box, 98.7m in the length and 66.3m in the width, equivalent to the area of a soccer field. The Barge, with the molded depth of 6.5m, total length of the leg of 75m (which can be extended to 95m according to the actual water depth and working conditions) and maximum working water depth of 40m, can make wider pavement of more than 2,500m2 on a single position without movement of the Barge, equivalent to an area of 6 standard basketball courts. Thus, the rubble leveling for a single immersed pipe can be completed with 4 positions of the Barge. Compared with Jinping No. 1, the Barge features higher leveling accuracy of ±40mm and higher pavement speed, maximally 5m/minute, one time faster than that of Jinping No. 1.
Besides, the construction management system of FHEC Jinping No. 2 is developed independently by ZPMC, breaking through foreign technical blockade and realizing the localization of the whole system. The system works as the general commander of different operations, just like a brain to the vessels, on the equipment control, remote fault diagnosis, vessel positioning and monitoring. The system can coordinate different parts for simultaneous operation by sending out orders and receiving feedbacks. The system of Jinping No. 1 was manufactured by Japanese and considered as the black box by the developers. However, ZPMC develops the localized black box at present, realizing the independent development of the system. The system will be test in the actual construction of Shenzhen-Zhongshan Highway in the near future.
Meanwhile, the Barge has 10 innovation features, including the 75m leg piling and new welding joints of the leg rack plate and cylinder body initialized by ZPMC, making sure higher accuracy of legs and cylinder body and saving the manpower, time and materials as well, detachable legs which can be used for different water depths and working conditions, encoder of automatic data clearing for gantry which can make sure the synchronous operation and automatic error correction of the gantry and Barge.
The Barge commenced in July, 2018 and was launched of the whole barge within 8 months, after manufacturing and assembly of different sections of main body for 5 months. The leg installation and equipment debugging will be started after the launching of the Barge. It’s predicted to arrive at the site of Shenzhen-Zhongshan Highway for further debugging and delivery.