XGT15000-600S tower crane tops out Changtai Yangtze bridge

A 350-metre main tower

The Changtai crossing carries an expressway, an intercity railway and an ordinary highway in a single structure and is the world’s longest-span cable-stayed bridge. Its main tower stands 350 metres tall; the installation height at Pier 6 reaches 379 metres. The link cuts the journey between Changzhou and Taizhou in Jiangsu Province from around 80 minutes to roughly 20.

Hoisting steel tower segments with a maximum piece weight of more than 500 tonnes at over 300 metres imposed unusually severe demands on lifting, control and safety performance. XCMG describes the operation as without precedent in tower crane practice.

A crane built for one job

The XGT15000-600S was developed jointly by XCMG and China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group specifically for this class of work, and rolled off the production line on 2 June 2022. It is rated at 15,000 tonne-metres, with a maximum lifting capacity of 600 tonnes and a maximum hook height of 400 metres — a combination aimed squarely at the recurring bridge-building problems of heavy segments, extreme altitude and long operating spans.

The crane also had to cope with the concrete side of tower construction, where XCMG cites alignment of the tower columns and the pumping of ultra-high-strength concrete to extreme heights as the persistent difficulties.

Whole-life, not just the lift

The demands ran well beyond the hoisting phase. The sequence began with pre-embedding foundation sections inside the pile cap, then jacking, heightening and tying the mast to the tower as it grew, arranging a dedicated high-voltage supply, maintaining thousands of metres of rope, and finally dismantling the crane at the end of its service on the project. Each step had to be executed without error at height.

The south main tower was capped on the morning of 26 September 2023, when the last segment of the upper tower column was placed. XCMG equipment also appeared on the deck: the full-span surfacing layer was laid using an XCMG large-width paver and a 13-tonne double drum roller, at a paving width of 15 metres and a 40 mm course thickness. The bridge is Jiangsu’s twentieth Yangtze crossing.