Fit for length

Specialized trailer manufacturer Faymonville, located in Belgium and Luxembourg, specialises in offering specially made equipment, and its standard range of trailers for heavy and oversized loads.

For Danish customer Norager, which transports tower sections and blades of wind turbines, Faymonville adapted an eight-axle Multimax semi-lowbed trailer to give a more efficient solution.

The Multimax was designed to transport the basic structures of wind turbines, i.e. the conical towers, by loading the heaviest part of the structure at the rear of the vehicle, over the axles. To accommodate this the Multimax was fitted with a 9 m prismatic channel between the axles. Loading height in the channel is 725 mm, and this can be reduced to 655 mm. A tower with a diameter of 3610 mm results in a loading height of 4270 mm with the structure overhanging by 3 m.

The components are usually transported on low bed semi-trailers that ordinarily carry tanks, configured in a two (front) axles plus four (rear) axles version or even 2 (3)+5 (depending on the weight of the component). The largest diameter rests on the front low bed part with a risk of overload on the gooseneck.

Faymonville claims a number of advantages. First, improved load distribution and easier manoeuvrability. The part of the tower with the largest diameter is loaded on to the rear axles. Secondly, it lowers costs. This vehicle constitutes a more cost-effective alternative to a 2 plus 4 or 2(3) plus 5 combination, which is usually necessary to carry 80 tonnes. It avoids having to use a system where the tower is suspended between two adaptors, each carried on a separate trailer module, which is not cost effective, according to Faymonville.

The eight axle semi-trailer delivered to Norager has a 15500 mm length behind the gooseneck and is double extendable to a total length of 42200 mm. Load capacity with an 8x4 tractor is 76 tonnes. For transporting blades or lighter tower components this semi-trailer has axles that can be lifted and lowered.