Quay 66 in the Bremerhaven port area was built in 1963 and was used as a landing stage for the former England ferry. The quay is located in the entrance to the northern lock of the port and is passed by about 2,000 ships a year. Over the years, it has been rammed by ships several times and was recently severely damaged by a car transporter.

Therefore, at the beginning of 2020, it was decided to build a new quay 66. The contract included, among other things, the creation of a conclusive demolition concept for the old ferry quay, which would guarantee safe shipping traffic.

The bidding consortium TAGU Tiefbau GmbH Unterweser and Ed. Züblin AG, together with Diamant-Technik Sanitz GmbH, under managing director Frank Weu, developed a concept that met the specifications. As the companies involved have already realised several hydraulic engineering projects together, a successful cooperation was achieved even under the special conditions caused by Covid-19. The developed concept included the breakup of the quay using a wire saw method and the removal of the individual parts by a crane on a floating pontoon.

It was important to note that only very small, free-standing working areas with a width of
1.4 m to 1.9 m were available in the flow area of the Weser. These limited areas were predestined for the use of several wire saws to carry out the demolition. Frank Weu, managing director of Diamant-Technik Sanitz GmbH, and Michael Stein, managing director of Kernbohrtechnik Rügen, decided to strategically plan this project together with the support of TYROLIT and to implement it professionally.

From July 2020 to August 2020, approx. 130 m² of reinforced concrete was cut and, with a demolition volume of 400 m³, approx. 1,067 t of reinforced concrete was removed. Vertical wire saw cuts with individual areas of up to 11.4 m² were carried out. The concrete parts, with individual weights between 25 and 75 tonnes, were excavated via drilling holes. (Ø 200 mm, total length: 48.4 m).

The work was made more difficult by the high demands on occupational safety and the temporary use of the floating pontoon due to the lock traffic. “Among other things, the horizontal partitions, which were very heavily reinforced and 2 m under water during floods, were particularly demanding. In some cases it was even necessary to start cutting on steel,” reports Jörg Koppe, application engineer at TYROLIT. Together with his colleague, application engineer Frank Berteau, he supported the construction companies carrying out the work.

Several TYROLIT high-frequency wire saws WCU17 with modular drives of the wall saw systems WSE1217 and WSE1621 were used. For the tools, the trust was put into TYROLIT PREMIUM DWM-C diamond saw wire and 8.5 mm wide diamond wire. Right from the start machines and tools proved to be the optimal solution for this project and the work was successfully completed nine days earlier than originally planned.