Carrying A380s in Singapore

If you had to replace the bearings of a bridge that carries the world’s largest passenger aircraft, which manufacturer would you talk to? When the need arose at Singapore’s Changi Airport, the responsible engineers placed their trust in mageba.

It’s not every day you get asked to design and manufacture bearings to support the superstructure of an airport taxiway structure that carries enormous aircraft across a highway – but our team in Singapore got the opportunity when the owner of Changi Airport identified the need to replace the bearings of four airport bridges. Two of these are taxiway bridges that are regularly crossed by A380 airplanes – the world’s largest passenger aircraft, which exert live loading that is many times higher than that from normal highway traffic. Since live loading from taxiing aircraft consists not only of aircraft weight forces but also of longitudinal and transverse forces due to acceleration, braking and turning, the demands on bearings for taxiway structures like these are unusually high.

To meet the structure’s needs, mageba designed and produced 138 RESTON®SPHERICAL bearings and 28 RESTON®POT bearings, and delivered them to site following completion of the specified laboratory testing. These were installed in a way that minimized impacts on airport operations without jeopardizing aircraft safety – and they can be relied upon to serve the airport’s needs for many years to come, because mageba has decades of experience in supplying extraordinary structural components for exceptional loading. So talk to us if ever you need a little extra confidence in the performance of your structure’s bearings – we will be glad to support you.

Client’s engineer: T.Y.Lin International Pte Ltd
Owner: Changi Airport Group
Contractor: China Communication Construction Limited (Singapore Branch)

Two taxiway bridges over a highway at Singapore’s Changi Airport required their bearings to be replaced – and mageba was entrusted with the job of designing and manufacturing the new components
(Source: www.changiairport.com)

Coordinated lifting of the wide superstructure at each bearing location on one bridge axis to facilitate bridge bearing replacement work

mageba designed and manufactured 138 RESTON®SPHERICAL bearings and 28 RESTON®POT bearings to support the bridge superstructures and their enormous live loads