On the snowy plateau

Amid high mountains and deep valleys

XCMG rotary drilling rig fleet tackles extreme construction

Helping build the Sichuan-Tibet Railway

The Sichuan-Tibet Railway is hailed as a miracle of human engineering, China's second railway into Tibet and a key national planning project, far more difficult to build than the Qinghai-Tibet line.

Wherever the country has a need, XCMG equipment is there. Since construction began on the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, multiple XCMG machines have been deeply involved, earning consistent praise for quality and service. On the Litang-to-Nyingchi section, new XCMG rotary drilling rigs account for over 90% of new machine arrivals, covering models from 24 tonne-meters to 70 tonne-meters — truly an all-star lineup.

Recently, the bridge piles on the west bank of the river at the Bodui Zangbo Grand Bridge on the Sichuan-Tibet Railway have been basically completed, totaling more than 70,000 meters. This is the fruitful result of a year's hard work by the XCMG rotary drilling rig fleet, which overcame severe cold and high altitude and brought into play its technical advantages in cold resistance and hard-rock breaking, after XCMG rotary drilling rigs successfully completed trial piles in 2022.

It is understood that the Bodui Zangbo Grand Bridge is located in Bomi County, known as a national geological park, at an altitude of about 3,000 m. With a total length of 13.9 km, it is the longest bridge on the Chamdo-to-Nyingchi section of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway.

On the east bank of the river, because it is close to the mountain, the strata are more complex, densely packed with cobbles and accompanied by large boulders. The piles are 1.25 m in diameter and 30-50 m deep. The boulders are granite with a hardness of about 120 MPa, and the hardest can reach 150 MPa, making drilling with traditional piling rigs extremely difficult, rock-breaking efficiency low, and construction progress affected.

Faced with this "hard nut to crack," the project team unanimously decided to call in XCMG. XCMG's XR280E rotary drilling rig was brought in, whose power head has a standard mode and a rock-entry mode for soil and rock strata respectively, and is equipped with an automatic rotation function that allows continuously adjustable rotation speed in both standard and rock-entry modes, ensuring efficient drilling. In actual application on the Sichuan-Tibet Railway site, it completed a hole in 1-2 days, achieving first-time quality and winning unanimous praise from the customer and the project department.

"XCMG rotary drilling rigs are very easy to maintain and service day to day, basically achieve full attendance, and always maintain high-efficiency operation," praised the project manager. "XCMG also provides on-site service to safeguard the normal progress of the equipment and the project. We are very satisfied."

As an important part of China's medium- and long-term railway network plan

the Sichuan-Tibet Railway plays a vital role

in the economic and social development of the western region

XCMG will spare no effort

to support the smooth progress of major national projects such as the Sichuan-Tibet line

by continuously supplying more "efficient, safe and reliable" construction machinery