Olympic legacy

Equipment made feasible different phases of the works that will shelter Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. The city will inherit a renewed and multifunctional urban infrastructure.

The city of Rio de Janeiro will receive in 2016 one of the most important sport events of the world. And to fit the city to the effective structure that an event of this size requires, Rio is carrying out several engineering works to attend athletes, coaches, pressmen, spectators, tourists and residents of the city, during and after the event.

The Complex of Olympic Park is installed in an area of 1.18 million sq.mt. which was occupied by the Jacarepagua Racing Circuit, in the Barra da Tijuca district. During the Olympic Games, this place will receive an estimated public of 120,000 visitors per day, to see the matches between national teams of 16 Olympic and 10 Paralympic sports.

One of the main construction areas of the project is the planned district of Ilha Pura, which will occupy a total area of 800,000 sq.mt.  From this area, 247,000 sq.mt. were reserved for the construction of the Olympic Village 2016, composed by 31 multi-purpose towers, seven condos, a linear park with 72,000 sq.mt. and interconnections between residential and commercial areas.

BATCHING

To carry out the works, the Project—that is focused in a profile of sustainability since the beginning of the worksite—developed several high-tech solutions. One of them is the use of a concrete batching plant Nomad D-40, produced by RCO. According to Maurício Cruz Lopes, general director of Ilha Pura, the batching plant was the best economic option for the Project, that was needing a third point to load the mortar needed to the works. But there are other points that influenced this option. “Our decision was also based on the ease of assembling and the great flexibility in changing the place of installation of the equipment, situations that would happen sometimes during the works”, tells him.

As highlights Leonardo Cavalcante, executive of the commercial area of RCO, the Nomad plant used in the works—planned to be carried out in three and a half years—is the most complete plant supplied by RCO in the country. Equipped with two horizontal silos, the assembly has also a scale for water dosing instead of a hydrometer. “The water scale developed specially for Ilha Pura  became a standard component of our plants”, explains the expert.

Another interesting differential of the Ilha Pura Project is the aggregate ramp. Built with metallic walls, this accessory was also supplied by RCO and contributed to improve significantly the process of plant starting, making unnecessary masonry works. “The installed batching plant has also three scales for additives, when the usual is to install one or at maximum two scales in normal plants”, adds him. “For this reason, we consider that this is a complete plant equipped with an automation software that ensures data quality, precision, reliability and traceability.”

MIXING

In addition to RCO, Schwing-Stetter is also working with several machines in the worksite, such as the concrete mixing plant  M2 and several truck mixers and concrete pumps. According to the company’s director Ricardo Lessa, both plants installed in the worksite of the new district are responsible by 90 percent of the concrete used in the works. “Using a double-axle horizontal mixer and having a production capacity of 94 cu.mt. per hour, the M2 was really one of the huge differentials of Ilha Pura worksite”, confirms him. “This model has also the important advantage of quick transport and easy assembly.”

Lessa explains that both mixing plants were erected in the worksite to prevent truck motion and to control their emissions. “Our estimation was of about 12500 truck paths to transport the whole concrete already produced in the works”, comments the director.

With the installation of these plants in the worksite, it was possible to produce 60,000 cu.mt. of concrete on site, preventing the emission of 170 tCO2e (tons of equivalent carbon), corresponding to burn 67,000 liters of diesel fuel.