The boat lift close to Lüneburg in the
northern part of Germany went in
service 1974 and was at that time
the largest ship lift in the world.
Two water-filled troughs lift ships of the
Europa class to help them master the
38 m height difference from the Mittellandkanal
to the level of the Elbe river.
Each of the troughs has a length of 100 m,
a weight of 5800 t and is lifted by a set of
240 wire ropes which run over large sheaves
on top of the 4 large concrete towers. To
minimize the needed power for the lift the
whole system is counterbalanced with heavy
concrete plates attached to the ropes.
After some decades in use the ship lifter has
been refurbished completely and the owner
decided to update the lifting technology. With
the support of the University of Stuttgart the
application was recalculated. The top requirement
to increase the guaranteed service
life to 35 years or 350,000 cycles led to the
recommendation of high performance ropes
with a plastic covered steel core and finally
to selection of CASAR Stratoplast ropes
with a diameter of 54 mm in Lang’s Lay.
In total 26 km of CASAR Stratoplast has been
delivered and installed, the first half in 2012
and now the second tower will follow to complete
the rework. This well proven solution
will guarantee the required performance over
the next decades.