Honoring the winners of the Bauma innovation award a ceremony organized by VDMA, the head associations of the German construction industry and Messe Munich was held in Munich on April 18.

The prize is awarded in the run-up to Bauma, the worldwide biggest fair on construction equipment, building material and mining machinery. More than 200 applications, national and international, had been submitted for the award offered in five categories; 15 world premieres made it to the final round. The award-winning innovations are the following:

• SL 750 EiControlPlus shearer loader by Eickhoff Bergbautechnik GmbH (category machinery)
• Energy storage cylinder by Liebherr Hydraulikbagger GmbH (category component)
• Boring wells with the help of glass beads – a technique by Ochs Bohrgesellschaft mbH (category construction process/construction work)
• Acoustic geo scanner developped by Clausthal University of Technoloy, Chair of Civil Engineering and International Mining (category research)
• New drilling procedure by Technical University of Dresden, Chair of Construction and Conveying Machinery (category research)
• Liebherr LH 120 C materials handling equipment by Liebherr Hydraulikbagger GmbH (category design)

According to the jury, the six winners in particular fulfilled the criteria according to which they had evaluated the innovations: their being future-compliant, their being of high practical use, their being a further development as regards protection of the environment and making the workplace more favourable to the human being and their being economical and productive and, at the same time, energy and cost efficient.

Christof Kemmann, chairman of the VDMA construction equipment and building material machinery industry association, who spoke at the event, noted that the competition showed that the German mechnical engineering is innovative.

This competition is a common project driven by head associations of the German construction industry such as the German Engineering Federation (VDMA = Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau e.V.), HDB (Hauptverband der Deutschen Bauindustrie e.V), ZDB (Zentralverband des deutschen Baugewerbes e.V.), BBS (Bundesverband Baustoffe, Steine + Erden e.V.) and bauma. The prize is awarded every three years, in 2010 for the ninth time.

 The award-winning innovations in detail:

 SL 750 EiControlPlus shearer loader by Eickhoff Bergbautechnik GmbH

With this shearer loader, it is possible – for the first time ever – to operate underground longwalling fully automatically, with the human being only having to fulfill monitoring functions while being himself in a safe and unencumbered surrounding. Equipped with linked infrared cameras and newly developped sensors, a system constantly monitoring the surroundings, a navigation system based on radar screening and a couple of visual cameras, the machine is able to avoid collision, detect and follow deposit boundaries and run the entire haulage and extraction automatically – thereby avoiding the extraction of surrounding rock, which would be unneccessary and unwanted. In addition, using this machine helps saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions.

Energy storage cylinder by Liebherr Hydraulikbagger GmbH

This energy storage cylinder is, in fact, an energy regeneration system designed especially for hydraulic excavators used in material handling work. Every time a load is lifted, a high amount of energy has to be exerted. When lowering the equipment, some of the energy, created by compressing gas, can be stored in an additional external gas cylinder. When lifting the equipment again, the energy stored in this gas cylinder assists the action of the two boom lifting rams. This means less fuel consumption and less pollutant as well as noise emissions.