4000 tonnes building 100 meters Moved with Evergreen Airbags

With Evergreen Marine airbags, one 4000 tonnes building, the 26 m high concrete sculpture with 22 m diameter circle base was moved 100 meters to make way for the expansion of a national road by Evergreen Maritime subsidiary, Eversafe Marine. It is the first time in the world to relocate building with marine airbags.

Moving caissons or vessel’s sections with marine airbags is not rare, those objects all have strong structural strength and low gravity center that ensure the movement safety. Regarding structure relocation, the most used method is steel bar plus concrete girder which needs to do lots of concrete wok and being time consuming. Using airbags to move building is a new try for both owners and Eversafe Marine.

That building was originally located in the traffic circle of one national road. Due to expansion of road, it needed to be moved north 100 meters to its new location. The move path is natural ground with 1.1/100 slope in lengthways and 2 cm level error in width.

In order to lift the sculpture with marine airbags, people need to place support girder beneath the structure base first. To dig tunnels in 1 m thick lime earth under the structure base was the first difficulty for the team. It took one month to place seven girders and get rid of all earth.

Before evergreen airbag lifting, the pulling and holding system were set up to control the structure. One 25 T winch was deployed to pull and 10 Tonnes heavy was attached to act as brake.

Eight Evergreen Marine airbags were inserted between the 50 cm high  girders. At about 0.2 MPa pressure the building was lifted up from the support girders. People removed the blocks and cleaned the pathway for the coming movement.

After 20 days hard work the sculpture arrived at its final location. People inserted concrete girders between airbags then deflated evergreen airbags slowly to let the building sit on the hard support. Then the permanent concrete base was casted for the sculpture.

This very hard project is a rigorous trial for Evergreen airbags. All Evergreen airbags had been heavily compressed for several days, not mention the concrete circle base abraded bags everyday. Anyway it is a gorgeous success of applying airbag heavy move technology in building field. Comparing with general building relocation method, it saved more than 70% cost and much time. Another advantage of using airbags to move structure is no harm to the environment which is invaluable for the society.