Liebherr Planetary Gearboxes for CSD Spartacus

In close cooperation with Royal IHC, Liebherr has designed special planetary plug-in gearboxes for rope winches to be installed on the Spartacus – the world’s largest and most powerful cutter suction dredger (CSD).

For the Spartacus, Liebherr and IHC developed an anchor winch with two high-torque plug-in gears (up to 1,500,000 Nm) and equipped these with axial play, in order to guard against any possible tensions in the steel structure. The multiple tooth mesh of the planetary gear stages provides the gears’ very high power density.

The drum bearings in the transmission are designed specifically for use in winches to comply with high service life and maintenance-friendly operation requirements. Salt water-resistant paints and the particularly robust and compact design make them ideal for deployment on the high seas, and ensure the long life of the components, according to Liebherr.

Liebherr also conducted a detailed heat calculation and supported IHC in choosing a suitable cooling option.

“For the Spartacus project, we chose Liebherr planetary gearboxes, because of the good experiences we already had with them,” said JaapJan de Koster, Lead Engineer at IHC.

“For a number of these winch drives, secondary controlled hydraulic motors were applied, which place high demands on the rest of the drive, such as an increased mass inertia. For this requirement Liebherr has applied their extensive knowledge of drive technology and provided us with a very solid and integrated solution. Their technical support on this project helped a lot and we had our minds free to focus on other technical challenges for this very special vessel.”

The Spartacus incorporates 12 different gears with torque ranging from 165,000 to 1,500,000 Nm in use. The overall high performance of the Spartacus will enable it to cut through even the harder sediments at high speeds. This was only a dream of the future, now cutting instead of blasting is a reality.

The maritime division of Liebherr also contributed to this major project, and supplied IHC with its largest CBW-F 3450 ship crane, which was specifically developed for the Spartacus in March of this year.