<P>The new Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport will soon provide improved links by air to the city. Work started in mid 2006 with the redevelopment of the existing Berlin Schönefeld Airport.The peoject is being aided by a fleet of Wirtgen slipform pavers, which are building taxiways, aprons and ramps as well as the southern runway and covers an impressive total area of some 1.5 million m2. The southern runway of Schönefeld Airport will serve as the northern runway of the new airport. The facility will have a new terminal building with direct rail connection as well as an additional,low cost router maintenance price 4km long runway to the south and opening of the new airport is scheduled for mid 2012. This will make Berlin Germany's third largest airport after Frankfurt and Munich and one of the top 50 airports worldwide. Future expansion could see the airport's capacity expanded to up to 360,000 aircraft movements/year, or 45 million passengers/year.</P>
<P>To handle the project, contractors Gebrüder von der Wettern, Eurovia VBU and Eurovia Beton formed the ARGE BBI GU II joint venture. The companies already owned large Wirtgen SP1500, SP1500L and SP1600 slipform pavers and these machines have been in operation at the airport since May 2008. At the same time,best cheap single wheel vibratory roller two SP500 Wirtgen pavers are being used to complete smaller areas and are also working in those places where specifications require steep slopes.</P>
<P>Senior site engineer Christoph Hofmeister for Max Bögl said, "We will be placing some 600,000m3 of pavement concrete altogether over the entire project. If everything goes smoothly, a large Wirtgen paver is capable of processing 6,000m3 of concrete within 24 hours." This huge project requires efficient planning and logistics, which is a complex task given the number of personnel at the site. Of the 350 people working for the joint venture each day around 90 are directly involved in the concrete paving operation,concrete vibrator new design with 15 on each paving train. These also include personnel carrying out work such as installing and removing the vertical formwork, cutting joints or supplying dowel bars.</P>
<P>The new southern runway will cover an area of 240,000m2, with a length of 4km and a width of 60m. To enable large aircraft like the Airbus A380 to land and take off at the airport, a 1.3m thick pavement structure was designed for the southern runway and for all the other movement areas. In a first step, the 500mm thick bottom layer, which contained both non-cohesive and cohesive soil, was stabilised using cement. The next 150mm thick layer features a stabilised mixture of hydrophobic cement and frost-proof sand. The contractors used Wirtgen machines for this work also and the job was carried out by several WR2500S soil stabilisers. This next layer is a 250mm thick hydraulically bound base layer. For the final step,pavement asphalt paver videos the slipform pavers placed a 400mm thick concrete layer between vertical formwork with sinusoidal cross-section. Planning and realisation specified a non-reinforced concrete design with longitudinal and transverse joints.</P>