Wirtgen roadbuilders support Büchel Air Base resurfacing

Reconstruction of the surface course at Büchel Air Base in Germany was completed using equipment from Wirtgen group and its brands Vögele, Benninghoven and Hamm, together with support from rental company Werwie and contractor Juchem.

Click on the image in this story to view a slideshow of the project.

Every month, Tornado aircraft take off and land roughly 200 times at Büchel Air Base, set amid the uplands of the Eifel region. Large transport planes also take off and land here.

The surface of the runway was reconstructed with stone mastic asphalt, a material which was chosen thanks it its better non-skid properties as well as its durability.

Two Wirtgen W 210i cold milling machines removed the old asphalt surface, using micro-fine milling drums with 1008 cutting tools distributed over a milling width of 2m, together with the company’s Level pro automatic levelling system.

When all 103000m² of asphalt surfacing had been removed after four working days, the Vögele pavers and Hamm rollers appeared on the scene to pave and compact the new surface course.

General contractor Juchem Asphaltbau provided two Vögele pavers - the Super 2100-2 and Super 2100-3i, each combined with a SB 250 TV Fixed-Width Screed built up to 11.5m.

To ensure continuous paving and maximum pavement quality, a Vögele material feeder worked in front of each paver. The paving teams worked “hot to hot” at a pave speed of 2.5 to 4m/min, building an asphalt pavement in a total width of 23m.

Finally, the team of Super 2100-3i and material feeder paved asphalt on the outer left-hand strip in a width of another 11.25m. The result was an asphalt pavement 46m wide with a constant transverse slope of 1.4% and just two “real” joints far away from the centreline.

In addition to a Vögele MT 1000-1 feeder, an MT 3000-2i PowerFeeder was used in Büchel - brought to the job site by rental company Werwie, which also provided the Super 2100-2.

Ten Hamm rollers behind the two pavers carried out the compaction of the new surface course. For this job, Juchem and Werwie chose articulated rollers of the HD+ and HD series with operating weights between 9 and 12 tonnes, four of them equipped with oscillating drums.

“Outstanding visibility is one of the reasons why customers like to rent our HD+ series HAMM rollers,” said Matthias Beckmann, rental park manager at Werwie.

Juchem also provided three Benninghoven asphalt mixing plants for the project – plants which produced 10000 tonnes in four days.

The entire project – from milling through to paving and compaction – was completed, on schedule, in just two weeks.