JOB REPORT

Ready for take-off and landing.

Replacing the pavement at the Airbus airport in Hamburg-Finkenwerder

It was a very special kind of challenge: an existing concrete runway of some 81,000 m² in size was to be milled off quickly and precisely within just 36 hours – cold milling machines from Wirtgen managed to complete the job in record time, needing no more than 18 hours. Rehabilitation of the new runway at the Airbus premises in Hamburg-Finkenwerder was complete 24 hours later.

A fleet of 13 cold milling machines from Wirtgen worked at full speed, milling off the 1.8 km long and 45 m wide runway at a depth of 6 cm. The operation began by milling off a 10 m wide strip in longitudinal direction. After that, the cold milling machines were lined up in staggered formation to mill off the remaining area cut by cut in transverse direction to the pavement. The resulting milling texture would guarantee a perfect interlock between the milled concrete surface and the new asphalt layer, producing an optimum base that would later be capable of withstanding the tremendous shear stresses created by accelerating or braking aircraft.

Asphalt paving began as soon as the milled surface had been cleaned. Two Vögele road pavers, a Super 2100 and Super 2500, paved a total quantity of 12,000 tons of asphalt, with an MT 1000-1 mobile feeder from Vögele ensuring continuous material flow. Twelve DV 8 rollers with oscillation from Hamm then compacted the freshly paved asphalt layer, making a significant contribution towards the load-bearing capacity of the new airport runway.

The project manager was impressed with the smooth progress of the rehabilitation operation, “Large-scale operations like this one are not the order of the day, even for our firm. It was a logistical challenge that we succeeded in mastering perfectly in cooperation with the Wirtgen Group.”