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a magazine from atlas copco construction technique – NO. 2 / 2013
eep in the Swedish woods there
is a cluster of roads where pushing vehicles to their top speeds won’t get you a ticket. When it opens, AstaZero will be among the most advanced vehicle testing grounds in the world, a place where car and truck manufacturers will challenge the speed and safety of their products. Located some 60 kilometers east of Gothenburg and scheduled for completion in September 2014, this facility will test vehicle dynamics, driver behavior, and measurement and positioning technology. At the researchers’ disposal will be six kilometers of country roads, one kilometer of multilane roads, three bridges, two acceleration stretches (each a kilometer long), a simulated city area and a 240-meter-diameter vehicle dynamics area (VDA).
“There is nothing like this VDA anywhere else in the world,” says Bo Wirén, Quality Engineer at Peab, the construction and civil engineering company contracted to build all of the paved areas. “It’s the biggest.” At the AstaZero site, Wirén is one of about 60 people from Peab, which began work in September 2012. The company has had, at most, 65 active machines in the area, including three compactors. That is the largest concentration of machines Peab has ever had in an area this size. Wirén says that completing the job in less than two years is perhaps the biggest challenge, noting that it has been particularly difficult transporting such huge volumes in such a short time; by the time Peab leaves the site in July 2014, the company will have extracted approximately 620 000 cubic meters of rock and 350 000 cubic meters of peat. The team is using the Atlas Copco Dynapac CA6000D compactor, the first to be put into operation when the model was launched