Bagger 288
Encyclopedia
Krupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
for the energy and mining firm Rheinbraun, is a bucket-wheel excavator
Bucket-wheel excavator
Bucket-wheel excavators are heavy equipment used in surface mining and mechanical engineering/civil engineering. The primary function of BWEs is to act as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations...
or mobile strip mining machine. When its construction was completed in 1978, Bagger 288 superseded NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
's Crawler-Transporter
Crawler-Transporter
The crawler-transporters are a pair of tracked vehicles used to transport spacecraft from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39. They were originally used to transport the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets during the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz programs....
, used to carry the Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle program
NASA's Space Shuttle program, officially called Space Transportation System , was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011...
and Apollo
Project Apollo
The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration , that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F...
Saturn V launch vehicle, as the largest land vehicle in the world at 13,500 tons.
Objective
The Bagger 288 was built for the job of removing overburdenOverburden
Overburden is the material that lies above an area of economic or scientific interest in mining and archaeology; most commonly the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. It is also known as 'waste' or 'spoil'...
prior to coal mining in Tagebau Hambach
Tagebau Hambach
The Tagebau Hambach is a large strip mine in Niederzier and Elsdorf, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite. Begun in 1978, the mine currently has a size of 33.89 km² and is planned to eventually have a size of 85 km². It is the deepest open pit mine...
(stripmine Hambach), Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. It can excavate 240,000 tons of coal or 240,000 cubic metres of overburden daily – the equivalent of a football field (soccer) dug to 30 m (98.4 ft) deep. The coal produced in one day fills 2400 coal wagons. The excavator is up to 220 m (721 ft) long and approximately 96 m (315 ft) high. The Bagger's operation requires 16.56 megawatts of externally supplied electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
. It can travel 2 to 10 m (6.6 to 32.8 ft) per minute (0.1 to 0.6 km/h). The chassis of the main section is 46 m (150.9 ft) wide and sits on 3 rows of 4 caterpillar track
Caterpillar track
Continuous tracks or caterpillar tracks are a system of vehicle propulsion in which modular metal plates linked into a continuous band are driven by two or more wheels...
assemblies, each 3.8 m (12.5 ft) wide. The large surface area of the tracks means the ground pressure
Ground pressure
Ground pressure is the pressure exerted on the ground by the tires or tracks of a motorized vehicle, and is one measure of its potential mobility, especially over soft ground. Ground pressure is measured in pascals which corresponds to the EES unit of pounds per square inch...
of the Bagger 288 is very small (17.1 N/cm2 or 24.8 psi); this allows the excavator to travel over gravel, earth and even grass without leaving a significant track. It has a minimum turning radius of approximately 100 meters, and can climb a maximum gradient of 1:18.
The excavating head itself is 21.6 m in diameter and has 18 buckets each holding 6.6 cubic meters (7.9 yd³) of overburden.
By February 2001, the excavator had completely exposed the coal source at the Tagebau Hambach mine and was no longer needed there. In three weeks it made a 22 kilometres (13.7 mi) trip to the Tagebau Garzweiler
Tagebau Garzweiler
The Tagebau Garzweiler is a large strip mine in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite...
, traveling across Autobahn 61, the river Erft
Erft
The Erft is a river in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It flows through the foothills of the Eifel, and joins the Lower Rhine . Its origin is near Nettersheim, and its mouth in Neuss-Grimlinghausen south of the Josef-Cardinal-Frings-bridge. The river is 103 km long, which is significantly...
, a railroad line, and several roads. The move cost nearly 15 million German mark
German mark
The Deutsche Mark |mark]], abbreviated "DM") was the official currency of West Germany and Germany until the adoption of the euro in 2002. It is commonly called the "Deutschmark" in English but not in German. Germans often say "Mark" or "D-Mark"...
s and required a team of seventy workers. Rivers were crossed by placing large steel pipes for the water to flow through and providing a smooth surface over the pipes with rocks and gravel. Special grass was seeded to smooth its passage over valuable terrain. Moving Bagger 288 in one piece was more economical than disassembling the excavator and moving it piece by piece.
Bagger 288 is one of a group of similar sized and built vehicles, such as Bagger 281 (built in 1958), Bagger 285 (1975), Bagger 287 (1976), Bagger 293 (1995), etc.
