Liebherr T 282B: Largest Earth-hauling Truck in the World
The Liebherr T 282B is an off-highway, ultra class, rigid frame, two-axle, diesel/electric, AC powertrain haul truck designed and manufactured by the Liebherr Mining Equipment Co. in Newport News, Virginia. The T 282B is Liebherr’s largest, highest payload capacity haul truck, offering one of the largest haul truck payload capacities in the world, up to 400 short tons.
The top level model is driven by a 10.5 ton, 90 liter diesel engine, producing 3650 horsepower and costs $3.5 million.
Crawler-Transporter:
Largest Self Powered Land Vehicle in the World
The crawler-transporters are a pair of tracked vehicles used to transport spacecraft from NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) along the Crawler way to Launch Complex 39. They were originally used to transport the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets during the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz programs. They were then used to transport Space Shuttles from 1981 to 2011. The crawler-transporters carry vehicles on the Mobile Launcher Platform, and after each launch return to the pad to take the platform back to the VAB.
The two crawler-transporters were designed and built by Marion Power Shovel (now Bucyrus International) using components designed and built by Rockwell International at a cost of $14 million each. They are the largest self powered land vehicles in the world.
The Z Machin
e: Largest X-ray Generator in the World
The Z machine is the largest x-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. Operated by Sandia National Laboratories, it gathers data to aid in computer modeling of nuclear weapons. The Z machine is located at Sandia’s main site in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The Z machine fires a very powerful electrical discharge (several tens of millions of amperes for less than 100 nanoseconds) into an array of thin, parallel tungsten wires called a liner (pictured above). The high electrical current vaporizes the wires, which are transformed into a cylindrical plasma curtain. Simultaneously, the current density induces a powerful magnetic field and their combination creates Lorentz forces which radially compress the plasma into a z-pinch process. The imploding plasma produces a high temperature and an X-ray pulse which can create a shock wave in a target structure. The target structure is placed in a cavity inside the wires called a hohlraum. The powerful fluctuation in the magnetic field (an “electromagnetic pulse”) also generates electric current in all of the metallic objects in the room. The vertical cylinder’s axis is conventionally termed the z-axis, hence the name “Z machine.”
Big Bud 747: Largest Tractor in the World
Big Bud 747 is a custom built agricultural tractor and was built in Havre, Montana in 1977 by the Northern Manufacturing Company, for a cost of $300,000.
It was built to work on The Rossi Bros. Cotton Farms in Bakersfield, California, to pull ripper ploughs to churn up fields to a depth of four feet. Big Bud 747 works at a rate of one acre every minute while motoring along at 8 mph.
Big Bud is a 16-cylinder behemoth powered by a 24.1 liter Detroit V16 92Turbo engine delivering 900 hp. It has 6 forward and 1 reverse gear driving all eight foot tall wheels.
“That motor has a potential of up to 1100 horsepower,” said Big Bud’s current owner Robert Williams. “It can handle our biggest equipment at the current setting, so there’s no advantage to burning more fuel and putting more stress on the drive-train.”
Phil Robertson, Editor
