It’s commonly known that ants are the heavy lifters of the natural world. Depending on species, scientists have found they can lift 10 to 100 times their own body weight. But when they work together they can move items which are 1,000 times heavier. It has been proven that they communicate and work harmoniously as a team.
To overcome the fact that humans cannot lift towers, turbines, huge boiler feedwater pumps or gigantic generators by ourselves, we have created machinery and manmade products to help, and created strategies to work in synergy.
Heavy lift customers can have a variety of objectives, including transportation, relocation, repositioning or maintenance of their assets. High-performance synthetic fiber slings can be the answer to these lifting challenges. But, which properties make these slings so effective?
With our own lifting sling products, durability is the ultimate property, and with it safety, reliability and longevity are also taken care of. Each Cortland synthetic sling is built with multiple layers, which can include materials such as silicone polyamide, Mud Filter, Cordura, HMPE, fluorescent Cordura/orange PVC. This process protects the strength fibers themselves, and produces functional, hard-wearing slings.
Compared with the use of alternatives, the teams using synthetic solutions benefit from soft, flexible slings to ease handling and storage. Steel wire, in particular, can require additional manpower and lifting machinery, while injury to personnel through hazards such as cut wires or recoil is often a concern.
It is also proven that a softer sling removes the likelihood that a lifted object will be damaged through heavy abrasion. Each sling can be covered with a highly durable jacket, which in subsea applications is fluorescent for greater visibility and therefore safety on site.
Our teamwork with customers has proven that synthetic slings can be adapted to a wide-range of lifting applications, ensuring overall plant reliability whatever the industry. We can construct slings to be as short as one meter yet have a minimum breaking load (MBL) of 1,000 tonnes. While ants work on evolutionary instinct within their social group, we are using our knowledge of high-performance materials to allow us to develop capabilities and achieve what would be certainly be impossible without a helping hand from manmade technology.
Two of our case studies offer further insight into this area: